Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!rutgers!clyde!cbosgd!osu-cis!tut!triceratops!karl
From: karl@triceratops.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: Several Questions
Message-ID: <5771@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 2 Feb 88 12:14:49 GMT
References: <8801261730.AA26717@icst-cmr.arpa.ARPA>
Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Lines: 32
In-reply-to: rbj@ICST-CMR.ARPA's message of 26 Jan 88 17:30:46 GMT


rbj@ICST-CMR.ARPA writes:
   (3) About the MScreen{Width,Length} in config.h. Why so big? Can RMS
       tell me where I can get a 300x300 terminal? :-)

Well, I'm using this Sun workstation with a Great Big Screen, and
every now and then, I use a 6-point font and edit files with lines
that are several hundred characters long.  It's nice to have the real
lines all fit on one screen line.  Cut these limits down if you like,
but it's nice having them large by default.

   (7) How about splitting off GDB and CPP from the EMACS distribution?
       I really don't need to FTP that stuff each time.

It's my understanding (having spent some time working with it) that
the cpp was put in there for the sake of old, OLD C compilers (such as
one finds in SysV.0, which I was using on a VAX when at Bell Labs)
which don't cope with arbitrarily-long identifiers - that cpp is used
with the stuff in the "shortnames" directory to hack up the original
source to something which the compiler could understand.  Given that
there are probably not a whole lot of V.0 systems out there these
days, it might be worth getting rid of the cpp and shortnames
subdirectories.  But as soon as you do that, you'll get a lot of
complaints from the folks who were depending on it.

Also, the cpp in the GNU Emacs distribution is not as recent as that
distributed with GCC.  The cpp used in GCC caused problems in sbrk()
on my V.0 VAX, and I never had time to chase down the problem.  As a
result, Richard reverted to the previous, working cpp for distribution
with Emacs, while going forward with the newer cpp in GCC
distributions.
-=-
Karl