Xref: utzoo comp.editors:1973 comp.os.vms:31333 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!mcgill-vision!snorkelwacker!usc!wuarchive!sdd.hp.com!mips!spim!mips!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!ncar!noao!arizona!naucse!jdc From: jdc@naucse.cse.nau.edu (John Campbell) Newsgroups: comp.editors,comp.os.vms,vmsnet.misc Subject: Re: SMG based editor on VAX/VMS Message-ID: <2487@naucse.cse.nau.edu> Date: 1 Jan 91 00:44:01 GMT References: Followup-To: comp.editors Organization: Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff AZ Lines: 77 From article , by jym@remarque.berkeley.edu (Jym Dyer): > .-. > |I|'ve seen an editor based on SMG. It was blindingly slow, > `-' though some of this is due to its trying fancy things (like > drawing ephemeral boxes over top of things). > <_Jym_> I guess it's time to admit something. I wrote an SMG based editor as part of a larger package that was a joint project between my university (Northern Arizona University) and DEC. I started just before TPU and EVE came out and I spent some time evaluating TPU before deciding upon SMG. You see, we needed verticle windows and a few other goodies that SMG would support that TPU couldn't. Also, I didn't want to give up total control of my data structures as the editor was to be callable from inside other applications we had in mind. Anyway, we use NED (NAU Editor) here nearly as much as we use EVE. NED is about 10-20% less efficient in CPU usage than EVE doing the same tasks. Moving off our VAX 11-730 and up to a VAX 6310, however, made the 10% or so penalty moot. Last time I looked at full-blown emacs (back when it was first ready for VMS) it was much more than a 20% penalty over EDT. By the way, NED uses less memory to do the same tasks as EVE (and I wasn't being all that careful about memory when I designed it). One could argue that TPU wasn't a good tool to write editors with either. Unfortunately, for me anyway, DEC never really looked at the editor and work on our "writing tools" that was going to use this editor came to a stop when I got transferred to another group. Still, the editor itself had a few nice features, and I tend to use it exclusively on VMS probably out of a sense of loyalty. Unsophisticated users like it, sophisticated users start looking for things that were on my "to be done" list, like regular expressions. Theoretically you can contact me for a beta agreement and, if the right person at your institution signs it, I can release my work to you. This agreement says you'll send me some feedback about what you like and don't like about the package every year or remove it from your system. In reality, no one has ever been very interested in taking a fair look at the package and I'm too busy elsewhere to implement much if anything new on the editor. It does, however, work with other terminals. It is a *very* close clone to EVE because I liked that interface for beginning users. It is not overtly slow, screen updates do not look terrible and, in fact, some recent VMS upgrades have improved NED's behavior in screen updating. Someone a few years ago analyzed SMG vs his own package and showed quite a few places where SMG could have been improved in terms of efficiency and functionality. Other than this very well done comparison, I haven't seem much better than SMG for a dumb terminal package. I've been trying to port NED to curses and have decided that curses was aptly named (like decode an arrow key on BSD curses or make a nice routine to pop up a window, move it around and then remove it and recover the window(s) underneath). Rumor has it that vi doesn't even use curses. Anyway, stop maliagning SMG and don't believe the rumor that the TPU team started about SMG being too slow to use in an editor. It's a little slower, but it really does work just fine. Think about it, most of the time you're inserting text on a line anyway. If you are on the end of the line then you can post a VMS read for the amount of characters you need and be as efficient as anyone else! Of course, you have to be willing to write your editor to detect some of these special cases (like when a window can scroll and when you have to fake the scrolling) but that's really the job of the person writing the editor. Final advice? Peter, get micro-emacs if there is a version that uses terminfo or termcap. I know it's frustrating and I know that someone wrote a termcap to termtable (VMS) translator, but few people have access to an SMG based editor. Mine is "available" but it is EVE-like, not emacs or vi like and it's currently unsupported (although in heavy use at our site). -- John Campbell jdc@naucse.cse.nau.edu CAMPBELL@NAUVAX.bitnet unix? Sure send me a dozen, all different colors.