Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!THUMPER.BELLCORE.COM!nsb From: nsb@THUMPER.BELLCORE.COM (Nathaniel Borenstein) Newsgroups: comp.soft-sys.andrew Subject: Re: ez and GNUemacs. Message-ID: Date: 2 Aug 90 11:46:17 GMT References: Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 27 Excerpts from internet.info-andrew: 1-Aug-90 ez and GNUemacs. Zalman Stern@andrew.cmu. (639) > Some time ago, in this newsgroup, Nathaniel Borenstein claimed that ez > predates GNUemacs. As the original author of ez, I can see no way of > justifying such a statement. I clearly remember using GNUemacs before > writing the ez file commands. The Visit File behavior of ez is stolen > from GNUemacs. > Arguments that BX, edittext, and xyzzy were out earlier are irrelevant > in that there are many earlier versions of emacs as well. Well, those are the arguments I would make, but I think they are relevant because it was my impression that what you're calling ez was an evolutionary development, not a whole new program. I believe there is still code in ez that is recognizably code from the original edittext and xyzzy; certainly there is a lot left over from bx. Gnumacs, on the other hand, was a complete rewrite, as I understand it, in order to follow the GNU philosophy of software unencumbered by any previous copyright. However, I recognize that this is a pointless thing to quibble about. The real point of the discussion is that complaining that Andrew is not Gnumacs compatible is silly, becuase Gnumacs was not relevant during its design. Even if you view ez as a completely new program, which I don't, it was still closely following the design that was established with the previous Andrew editors.