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From: mishkin@apollo.UUCP (Nathaniel Mishkin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: Re: AEGIS/UN*X
Message-ID: <8706151816.AA03733@apollo.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 15-Jun-87 13:52:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: apollo.8706151816.AA03733
Posted: Mon Jun 15 13:52:15 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 21-Jun-87 03:18:01 EDT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Distribution: world
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People have been doing a find job hashing this topic about.  It's been
great fun plowing through it all at once.  (I was at Usenix all last
week.) I think most of the points have been fairly well hashed out.  I
just have three comments (and a meta-comment):

First, no one that I know of thinks that the DM by itself is God's gift
to editing and window management.  However, I've used a number of "real"
editors (Emacs, etc.) in my life, and even so, I find the DM editing
functions quite effective.  I miss word wrap too.  I miss a lot of other
things.  But I use it all the time.  It's amazing what you can do with
key definitions.  The question is not simply whether an editor has some
feature, but how often one uses that feature and how much that feature's
absence affects one's productivity.  For me, I haven't found the missing
features all that crippling to my productivity.  Just remember, most
Emacs devotees are appalled by VI, despite the fact that a number of
people swear by VI.  Finally, one would be naive to think that we aren't
addressing the deficiencies in all our products and are bound to the
interaction style currently imposed by the DM.

Second, before anyone says how bad DSEE it, I think they should really (a)
read the documentation closely, and (b) use it.  Anyone who thinks that
RCS or SCCS in combination with "make" has anything like the functionality
of DSEE is sadly mistaken.  There's no comparison.  Sure it's big and
complicated -- so are the problems it's trying to address.  (Further,
I've used it quite effectively on essentially one-person projects with
sources only in the few thousands of lines.)

Third, "cmcmanis@sun.uucp" stated that "UNIX is an O/S, and as such can
only reasonably be implemented as part of the kernel".  Now THERE'S a
strong point.  I'd also like some evidence for it.  Hopefully it's a
false statement because otherwise, we're ALL in for a lot of headaches
in the future if we ever want to see Unix evolve.

A final meta-point:  We know our system has bugs and deficiencies and
we want to hear about them.  We're working on a number of them right
now.  However, a lot of the messages seem to imply that what people should
do is just buy some other piece of equipment, as if that equipment wouldn't
have it's own set of bugs and deficiencies.  Having a "native Unix" kernel
doesn't guarantee a few number of problems.  Sadly enough, we all carry
around ratty baggage.  People should open there eyes wide no matter what
vendor they buy from.

                    -- Nat Mishkin
                       Apollo Computer Inc.
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