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From: rbbb@RICE.EDU (David Chase)
Newsgroups: net.emacs
Subject: Re: Question of curiosity: who is still buying Unipress or CCA?
Message-ID: <706.rbbb.titan@Rice>
Date: Tue, 7-Oct-86 05:17:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: Rice.706.rbbb.titan
Posted: Tue Oct  7 05:17:00 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 8-Oct-86 06:38:35 EDT
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We aren't "buying" Unipress emacs, but we still use a version that we
bought from them years ago.  We had "maintenance" for a while, but gave up
on it because (1) the upgraded version (2.00) was incompatible at the USER
level with what we were accustomed to and (2) we had installed local
hacks, and did not feel the urge to port them and (3) the new release was
at least as buggy as what we ran at the time.  Later on we had time, but
it just fell through the cracks.  I hear that the new releases of Unipress
emacs are much more reliable, but so is the emacs that I am running right
now.  (For example, I compiled a version with "malloc_debug(2)" and could
not knock it over).

You should not underestimate the power of inertia.  We are a university,
and I am a graduate student, but we have a fairly huge (the entire CS
department, and students in all the CS classes except "computers for
poets") community of emacs users.  Many of them use Mlisp packages that
they do not understand.  Converting most of the local code is EASY.
Converting the local users is not.  I am not willing to even plan the job.

The investment in Mlisp code is also important (though I said conversion
was relatively easy above, there is that last 1 %).  Right now I am using
a mailer that is pretty specific to this emacs, and I am not inclined to
move to another mailer.  I have tried a few, and I thought that they were
awful (this includes the mailers distributed in Unipress V2.00 and gnu
17.57).  Convert the code, you say?  Try converting 7500 lines of Mlisp.
No, it is much easier for me to sit here and write my thesis, and prepare
papers for conferences.  The tools I have are good enough.

David

(If you wonder what makes a mailer not awful, send mail and I will try to
explain.  It is hard, because I have come to take so much for granted.  A
lot of it has to do with a sensible choice of defaults.)