Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site bocklin.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!think!harvard!seismo!hao!noao!arizona!bocklin!whm From: whm@bocklin.UUCP Newsgroups: net.emacs Subject: To GNU or not to GNU? Message-ID: <375@bocklin.UUCP> Date: Tue, 1-Oct-85 05:42:16 EDT Article-I.D.: bocklin.375 Posted: Tue Oct 1 05:42:16 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 3-Oct-85 06:28:07 EDT Distribution: net Organization: Dept of CS, U of Arizona, Tucson Lines: 33 I've been a user of Gosling's/Unipress Emacs for several years now, but I've recently found myself pondering if I should switch to GNU Emacs. Some of the arguments I've seen for GNU Emacs (in no particular order): "It's free." -- That's a good point, but we've already got most everything in sight licensed for Unipress Emacs. "It has a real Lisp (cons and all)." -- To tell the truth, I'm not too wild about Lisp. Sure, Unipress Emacs has only Mock Lisp, but I've developed a unique solution for this particular problem and I consider this advantage of GNU Emacs over vanilla Unipress Emacs to be non-relevant (for my purposes). "It's bound to be popular." -- There's no denying this, but what advantage does this present? I guess it could be argued that the set of programmable-editing primitives in GNU Emacs is better than that of Unipress Emacs, but from what I've seen, the GNU function set doesn't represent a "leap" with respect to what's in Unipress Emacs or for that matter, CCA Emacs. Note that I'm not interested in getting flamage started, I'm just honestly debating whether a switch to GNU Emacs would be worthwhile or if I'm just attracted to it because it's new and seems to meet the needs of many people. Are there other reasons to switch to GNU Emacs? If it's just the above, I think I've talked myself into sticking with Unipress for a while longer. Bill Mitchell whm%arizona@csnet-relay {ihnp4,noao,mcnc,utah-cs}!arizona!whm Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com