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From: cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: Emacs......meaning???
Message-ID: <62776@bbn.BBN.COM>
Date: 17 Feb 91 17:27:26 GMT
References: <1991Feb12.092635.5393@cs.city.ac.uk> <1991Feb14.162207.22581@usenet.ins.cwru.edu> <21862.27bbb473@cluster@ukc.ac.uk>
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cur022%cluster@ukc.ac.uk (Bob Eager) writes:

}In article <1991Feb14.162207.22581@usenet.ins.cwru.edu>, chet@odin.INS.CWRU.Edu (Chet Ramey) writes:
}> In article <1991Feb12.092635.5393@cs.city.ac.uk> dh130@cs.city.ac.uk (Andrew Thompson) writes:
}>>3) What does emacs mean? (Is it of yiddish decent as with Gulam?)
}> EMACS = Editing MACroS
}> Due to the original DEC20 implementation as a bunch of macros for TECO.

}I always thought it was:

}       Extended MACro System     (for the same reason)

}RMS, are you listening? Surely you must be the definitive source?

I'm not sure that RMS reads comp.editors, but "Editing MACros" is correct.  The
DEC20 is a bit off the mark: it was developed at the AI Lab at MIT on a
Decsystem10[*] running ITS [and emacs really was "just" a set of macros that
built on 'Real Time Mode', which had been hacked into ITS TECO].
  [*] I think... I can't remember when the PDP-6, on which ITS was originally
      developed, turned into a -10.

/Bernie\

ps, doesn't 'the history of emacs' or some document like that come bundled
along with the GNU emacs distribution?  /b\