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From: billmers@merlyn.enet.dec.com (Meyer Billmers)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: GNU emacs
Message-ID: <18414@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 20 Dec 90 18:51:24 GMT
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Reply-To: billmers@merlyn.enet.dec.com (Meyer Billmers)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
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>I have seen lots of writeups about GNU Emacs on the net but I've never
>seen it in action. I would appreciate it if someone would let me know
>(e-mail?) what the advantages of GNU Emacs over MicroEmacs. I hear it's
>quite large and would like to know what the extra baggage does!

Depends on what you want. One level of answer to your query is that GNU has 
Lisp underneath it, so that if you want to do your own customization, there
is a powerful programming environment to facilitate that.

If you write programs in your emacs, then GNU has modes to support automatic
indentation, parenthesis matching, and so on for languages like C and Lisp.

As a text editor, it contains spell check, auto fill (although Microemacs
does contain a slimmed down version too), and other generally friendly 
features.

If you don't need that kind of power, just want to do "vanilla" text editing, 
and don't want to spend the memory costs, you don't need GNU. But there are
lots of times when you get stuck needing to do something just a little fancy;
the ability to write your own Lisp function or use a keypad macro is really
handy.