Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
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From: rees@dabo.citi.umich.edu (Jim Rees)
Subject: Re: Questions about epoch.
Message-ID: <510d2c41.cb12@dabo.citi.umich.edu>
Sender: usenet@terminator.cc.umich.edu (usenet news)
Reply-To: rees@citi.umich.edu (Jim Rees)
Organization: University of Michigan ITD
References: <1991Apr18.081840.14744@mack.uit.no>
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 19:13:26 GMT

In article <1991Apr18.081840.14744@mack.uit.no>, eystein@hannibal.hsn.no (Eystein Mathisen) writes:
  
  Could somebody tell me the basic features of epoch? As far as I know it is
  a window-based, emacs-like editor (I may be wrong).

I broke your 170 column question into two lines; not all of us have such a
huge screen!

It isn't just emacs-like, it is emacs, based on Gnu emacs.  It's a multi X
window emacs, with the minibuffer occupying a separate window.  It's very
nice, I use it quite a bit.

  	* Does it run under X on Apollo/Domain SR10.2 OS ?

It doesn't use widgets, it uses the toolkit directly, and works with r3.  It
should also work with r4 but I haven't tried this (r4 is upwardly compatible
at the toolkit level, but not at the widget level).  I've run it at both
sr10.2 and sr10.3.

  	* How much RAM is required to have a reasonable response ?

As much as you can afford.  At least 12 Mb.  Maybe less if you only use X,
and not the DM.

  	* How many Mbytes of disk-space is required to install it ?

I'm not sure -- maybe about 15 Mb to build it, but considerably less to run
it, maybe 5 Mb.  The executable is 1 Mb, info is 1 Mb, man is 1.4, lisp is
about 4, source is 4.

  	* Is it easy to learn ?

Very easy if you already know emacs.

  	* Where can I get it (i.e. is it ftp-able or do I have to
  	  purchase it) ?

Epoch is free.  Get the file "epoch-patches.tar.Z" by anonymous ftp from
dabo.citi.umich.edu.  It contains info on acquiring epoch and some patches
you'll want to run it on your Apollo.  This is for epoch 3.2, I don't know
it there is a more recent one.  From the epoch blurb:

Epoch is a modified version of GNU Emacs 18.55 with several major enhancements:

	o Multiple X-Window support
	o Marked and Attributed regions of text
	o Support for multiple fonts (fixed size), underlining, and
	  stipple patterns.
	o Asynchronous communication with other X-Clients (usually the
	  window manager)
	o Mouse-dragging with highlighting to support mouse-based cut-and-
	  paste.
	o Access to raw X-Window objects