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From: hnridder@cs.ruu.nl (Ernst de Ridder)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc,comp.sys.laptops
Subject: Re: Freemacs or MG2a or Epsilon?
Keywords: emacs, laptop
Message-ID: <1991Apr08.110826.19865@cs.ruu.nl>
Date: 8 Apr 91 11:08:26 GMT
References: <7704@uklirb.informatik.uni-kl.de>
Organization: Utrecht University, Dept. of Computer Science
Lines: 71

In <7704@uklirb.informatik.uni-kl.de> steiner@informatik.uni-kl.de (Donald Steiner) writes:

>few questions regarding GNU Emacs-like programs for MS-DOS.  From
>ones: Freemacs & MG, both PD, and Epsilon's commercial product.  Not

>1. Which do you prefer and why?
>2. Which is most customizable? I.e., for which would I have most
>3. Which would run best on a low powered laptop? I'm looking at a
>80C86 with either 1 or 3 meg RAM. Emacs is pretty much all I'll be
>4. How does one get ahold of the Epsilon product (in the States), and

I used (only picking from the emacs-like products) MicroEmacs, Sail,
Epsilon and an emacs-clone which was just called
emacs.  Currently I'm using Epsilon (4.13, newest is 5.0?).  Since this
is the one I have the most to tell about, I'll restrict my comments to this one.

1)
Epsilon...
It's fast, small and has an excellent extension language. -- much better then
the macrolanguage supported by MicroEmacs.
It's fast enough to be run on an XT (8 Mhz),
small enough to be used on a machine without harddisk,
can run programs in parallel! (e.g. sorting a file, or compiling),
processbuffer -- run interactive programs from within the editor,
makes use of EMS or diskswapping -- amount of space used can be customized.

2)
Epsilon's extension language (called EEL) is pretty much C-like.  Differences
to ANSI-C are summed up in less then a page, both extensions and restrictions,
the only two restrictions I can recall now is the lack of floats and static
variables.
All of epsilon's commands are EEL-routines.  Command completion works
automatically on your own EELroutines.  A debugger and profiler are included.
The profiler isn't that useful.  Compiled code is pretty fast -- the
sort-buffer command (written in EEL) is faster than DOS sort.
There is no problem adding your own command-line switches, modes ( C, Tex,
etc.) or main-loop extensions.  EEL even allows you to call interrupts.

3)
epsilon.exe is ~65Kb
statefile (compiled EEL extensions) varies, out of the box about 70k.
memory use for the editor and extension is about 130Kb, when completely
swapping (for a shell) 4Kb remains.

4)
Epsilon is produced by Lugaru:

Lugaru Software Ltd.
5843 Forbes Ave.
Pittsburgh, PA 15217

(412) 421-5911
fax: (412) 421-6371

Epsilon is available for DOS, OS/2 and Unix.  It costs US $195.  Mail order
services are generally cheaper

>Donald Steiner

Ernst de Ridder

N.B.  I've got nothing to do with Lugaru.  I'm just a very satisfied
Epsilon-user.  When you think I didn't point out the bad sides of Epsilon,
that's just because I don't know any.  This product really deserves you
attention.  It's the best editor I know.

-- 
	Qualitas qualitatem inducit. Semper ego qualitatem.

popa
iret