Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!SUN.COM!wmb From: wmb@SUN.COM (Mitch Bradley) Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Subject: Re: Forth window system interface Message-ID: <9001132256.AA02345@jade.berkeley.edu> Date: 12 Jan 90 09:07:51 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: Forth Interest Group International List Organization: The Internet Lines: 43 > Discussion about relative speed of EMACS vs. vi at 1200 baud. The screen update routines in uEMACS are not as sophisticated as those in vi, so it doesn't do quite as well at low baud rates. Most other versions of EMACS (e.g. JOVE, Unipress, GNU) have excellent screen update routines that do reasonably well at low baud rates. uEMACS screen routines were originally written to make only minimal assumptions about the terminal capabilities, using only VT-52 functionality (the VT-52 did not have "insert-character"). This was probably a good idea at the time; there were some legal battles about whether or not certain portions of screen update code were proprietary. These legal issues affected JOVE (it contained some AT&T code) and GNU EMACS (it originally contained screen update code from Unipress EMACS; that code was then rewritten to avoid some legal hassles). The simpler uEMACS screen update code was not affected by these battles. Many recent versions of uEMACS use direct screen access on machines which support it (e.g. PCs). > The version of Forthmacs I got (1.1, dated '86) is surely long forgotten. > Which is the actual version ? Actually, version 1.1 is still current. I update the patches file as bugs crop up, but by and large, version 1.1 was good enough that it seemed better to leave it alone for awhile. In the shareware distribution channel, there is a tremendous time lag between the release of something and its propagation everywhere it is going to end up. If I were to change it too often, I would end up with a big support headache. > BTW: What do you think about Sun's SPARC's which have Forth builtin? I think they are fantastic, but I am very biased. I spent the last 2 years of my life developing and fighting for those Forth PROMs. That's one of the reasons that Forthmacs newsletters have been so scarce lately. From my perspective, even neglecting the Forth PROMs, the SPARCstation-1 machine is the most satisfying machine that Sun has yet built, and I have been involved with all of Sun's machines since the Sun-1. Mitch