Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!bu.edu!husc6!paperboy!meissner From: meissner@osf.org (Michael Meissner) Newsgroups: comp.emacs Subject: Re: real X windows support from emacs Message-ID: Date: 31 May 90 19:07:37 GMT References: <90May31.100818edt.14538@neat.cs.toronto.edu> Sender: news@OSF.ORG Organization: Open Software Foundation Lines: 49 In-reply-to: kramer@cs.toronto.edu's message of 31 May 90 14:09:29 GMT In article <90May31.100818edt.14538@neat.cs.toronto.edu> kramer@cs.toronto.edu ("Bryan M. Kramer") writes: | Is there any movement towards an emacs that makes real use | of the capabilities of the X window system? For example, certain | sunview textedit features would make editting much more efficient. | In general, these are features that have been known in various | editors, each of which makes editting more efficient: | | a) scroll bars | b) hilighted selections (region between point and mark); secondary selections | c) copy or cut and paste holding down a key and using the mouse | to outline the region to be copied/moved (in Interlisp it was | called shift-select). I personally like the openwindows style for selections. | d) search commands that use the current selection to move | e) use of multiple clicks to make smart selections --- in text mode | this would be word sentence paragraph; in lisp mode atom s-expr | f) draw the cursor between characters where it really is. | g) use graphics to draw marks as well. | | h) use INDEPENT X windows for each window --> this means indepently shapable | and moveable; allow them to shrink to icons and in cases where they | display things such as direds or buffer menus, they would update themselves | when opened. Generally functions such as meta dot, dired, buffer list | should open new windows rather than change the contents of the current | window. | | | Personally, I think that h) would provide the biggest gain. | Of course, in implementing it, implementing scroll bars would be trivial. Epoch certainly has h) though it does it by adding a new abstration called 'screens', to which one or more emacs buffers can be displayed, and they add a bunch of new keystrokes like \C-Z 4 \C-f, find file in other screen. I believe it has hooks for a), b), c), and possibly d) and e). Epoch is based on emacs 18.55, and is available from anonymous FTP on the machine: a.cs.uiuc.edu, possibly via anonous UUCP from tut.cis.ohio-state.edu. There is a mailing list for epoch, though it's been quiet recently (send mail to epoch-request@cs.uiuc.edu to be added). It will be interesting to see what happens when the long rumored GNU version 19 hits the streets. -- Michael Meissner email: meissner@osf.org phone: 617-621-8861 Open Software Foundation, 11 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA Catproof is an oxymoron, Childproof is nearly so