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From: jimh@hpsadla.HP (Jim Horn)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Questions and Comments Amigoid...
Message-ID: <900001@hpsadla.HP>
Date: Wed, 1-Oct-86 18:53:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: hpsadla.900001
Posted: Wed Oct  1 18:53:43 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Oct-86 10:09:46 EDT
Lines: 56

[*   All right - what's a Line Eater, any way? }

Some general questions for the Net....

*    Does anyone out there know of a really worthwhile editor for the
Amiga?  I've got the 'vi' lookalike ('z') which comes with Manx's
Commercial C package, and I do enjoy it, but it is really only intended for
writing programs, so it lacks word wrap and various other niceties.  Yes,
EMACS is available, but like all other Amiga programs I've seen, it has a
sssllloooooooowww screen update (equivalent to ~1200 baud).  Why I should
have to wait for a screen to slowly scroll to what I'm looking for in such
a machine is beyond me, especially since I have no need for subwindowing
while editing.  Foreground/background windows do just as well in this
limited-screen environment.

     Yes, I know about Scribble! and many other commercial editors.  But
learning an editor well enough to judge it properly is an expensive
investment in time and effort.  Some of you have undoubtedly already done
so.  Any suggestions?  Oh yes - I know that picking an editor, like
picking an article of clothing, depends heavily on tastes.  But a turkey is
a turkey...  And my Amiga should be faster and easier to use than the Apple
][+ I just gave away, not slower and more difficult.

*    Has anyone done any work in getting Friedrich Knauss's ray traced
graphics program in C running on the Amiga?  I've got it compiled on mine,
but it blows up (16 bit pointers again?).  While we have made a number of
additions to his code here (with nifty results!) on our HP9000 machine,
having it on the Amiga with IFF output, display of the results as they are
computed, etc. would be great.  I'll be happy to send what I've got so far,
but wonder what others have done.  With anti-aliasing (which we've added),
super bit maps, 16 levels of gray and a larger-than-640x400-window, the
results should be spectacular!

*    Has anyone noticed that the "life" program on Fish disk #32 (#31?
#30?) only takes about 850 NANOseconds per pixel per generation?  That this
is faster than any computer under several hundred thousand $ has ever done
it?  That our Atari/Mac/IBM/??? friends are waaayyyyy out in the dust on
this one?  That we have yet to see just what we can do with the Blitter?

*    Finally - forgive me, but I can't resist tossing a nugget into the cat
fight - is there anyone who would seriously suggest putting an all-out drag
racing engine into the family sedan for ordinary day-to-day driving, or an
old in-line six into a racing Porsche?  And that the made-for-many-users-
running-many-tasks Intel MPUs and the get-a-small-number-of-jobs-done-NOW
Motorola MPUs both are excellent?  Since my own computer is only serving
one user, and usually only doing one job (and the rest of the time, only a
few), I'll take the 68000 family any day!  But hey, are (for example) the
folks from other countries stupid and ignorant because they don't speak
English?  Same for users (and enthusiasts) of other chip families.  And
fooey on the religious fervor in MPU debates.

	Jim "I've seen the future, and it's not here yet" Horn
	(707) 794-3130     1212 Valley House Dr, Rohnert Park CA 94928

All opinions by anyone are equally valid, and anyone who thinks otherwise
should be locked up.