Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!sdd.hp.com!decwrl!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: 4 Aug 90 15:27:02 GMT References: Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 31 Hey, if I was wrong, I'm sorry. I was just going by what I thought I knew. Excerpts from internet.info-andrew: 4-Aug-90 Re: ez and GNUemacs. Zalman Stern@andrew.cmu. (4457) > I find such statements extremely galling in that they deny good work > done by good people. Imagine how you would feel if someone said > "Messages is just BAGS translated into C with some user interface > enhancements picked up from ReadMail and ReadNews." To be totally honest, I don't think that would be an unfair characterization, although I'd also point to a few additional innovations such as the messageserver/client architecture and the specialized active messages. But then, I don't see anything wrong with seeing my work as evolutionary rather than revolutionary. In fact, in general I think it's a good thing. But if you'd rather maintain that ez is all new, that's fine with me. To my mind, actually, that attitude explains a lot. However, the fact that you could explain things like "The redraw code and editing commands for text were completely rewritten by Mike Kazar going from edittext to bx. " indicates, to me, that lots of other things weren't rewritten at that point. I don't deny that most of the code has changed completely from the early days, but I don't think there was any point at which you threw out everything and started over from scratch, which is all I was saying. I wasn't denying that a lot of good work went in to the evolution from xyzzy to ez -- obviously it did. But it happened gradually, in stages, that's all. For the record, I think this is an extremely stupid thing for us to be arguing about. -- Nathaniel