Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!uflorida!unf7!tlvx!sysop From: sysop@tlvx.UUCP (SysOp) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: An issue for the entire Amiga Community. Summary: shareware, text editors Message-ID: <318@tlvx.UUCP> Date: 25 May 90 13:33:50 GMT References: <1990May17.001308.29541@csmil.umich.edu> <136118@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> Organization: Temporal Vortex BBS of Jacksonville, Florida Lines: 91 In article <136118@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>, cmcmanis@stpeter.Eng.Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) writes: > In article <11747@cbmvax.commodore.com> andy@cbmvax (Andy Finkel) writes: > >My Sun came with an editor (vi) and I still went out and > >got a 'better' editor. > > What do you mean 'got' did you buy a better editor from someone or > did you "get" gnu emacs or something similar for "free". Well, we ARE talking about VI. Isn't anything better? 1/2 ;-) > > >Even though memacs and ed come with the Amiga, there still > >are many shareware editors (Az, Jed, Uedit, Dme, m3g, stevie, > >textra, ...just to name a few) > > I don't doubt the number of shareware editors will continue to > exist. I want a "commercial quality" editor. That means it has > and easy to use manual, gets updated when bugs are found, meets > all of my requirements (like different font support, separate > screen or wb screen, etc). > > >There are few commercial editors, true. CED, (LSE and Z), > >and TxEd plus come to mind. > > I would disqualify LSE and Z mostly because they are bundled > with the respective C compilers. I had overlooked CED (sorry > about that Perry). Personally, I would disqualify any VI or e-macs look alike. :-) I would like something like Brief or Edix, which run on the clones. Can CED be configured to look reasonably like Brief? (Since I'm used to it now....) Speaking of Brief, it seems to be extremely popular. There don't seem to be that many text editors for the clones, or at least not that I've seen in the few development areas around here. (Not that the rest of the country couldn't be doing something different.) Maybe even the same could be said of word processors: people tend to choose from among just a few. If the clones have, say 3 or 4 fairly popular text editors, and the Amiga 2, this doesn't seem unreasonable, given the larger user base of clones. > > Shareware is a very close concept to "dumping" which the > Japanese got in to so much trouble for. A lot of people who If I have a neat program idea, should I not do PD/Shareware? Is this in order to help the software industry? Can you name a company that'd like a collection of various hacks and utilities from random programmers? :-) (Seriously, it'd be nice to know the alternatives to going shareware.) > do shareware don't do it for the money. Instead, they just ... > Unfortunately, they can't compete with an allegedly inferior > product that is being "sold" for less than cost. The smart > business decision is just to not even try to compete. ...or to make your product so much better and offer more support, so people will know which is the greater value. Some shareware authors don't/can't offer much support. At work on the clone, I would never go to an Emacs or VI clone from Edix or Brief. Perhaps this is personal opinion. :-) > > Anyway, it isn't a monochrome situation, rather sometimes > extenuating circumstances make a commercial product worth > while. Including an editor that is tailored to your compiler > is a good example. > > > -- > --Chuck McManis Sun Microsystems > uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: Internet: cmcmanis@Eng.Sun.COM > These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you. > "I tell you this parrot is bleeding deceased!" This is an interesting topic, since I do program, and a couple of times have toyed with the idea of doing something for shareware. I'm interested in hearing what people have to say on this. I'm also interested in hearing Marco's views on copyrights, since with whatever you do, this is a potential problem. I have one question on this. If one were to make an RPG character generator, would that still be covered under the RPG's copyright? Would it be sufficient to make a "generic" generator, where the user could type in the tables manually (in other words, not distribute the tables). I'm not sure if the rest of it would be "ideas" or what. (I know, there are D&D character generators on the shelves, it's just an example from an idea I had a long time ago, and never tried... but, I don't recall a good answer to this question. I guess I could have written the companies in question and asked what they thought, if I was that serious about it.) -- Gary Wolfe ..uflorida!unf7!tlvx!sysop, ..unf7!tlvx!sysop@bikini.cis.ufl.edu