Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!husc6!bbn!uwmcsd1!ig!agate!ucbvax!ISIS.MIT.EDU!SHAVA
From: SHAVA@ISIS.MIT.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: editor warts     (sorry, couldn't resist...:-)
Message-ID: <8802081600.AA05859@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>
Date: 8 Feb 88 16:04:00 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 44

...

A very long time ago (as such things run...) Mark Chilenskas (then of 
Computer Corp of America) and I (then of Varian) published a DECUS paper
called "Tailoring EDT for the Structured Languages Programmer" (St Louis.
Anyone remember when that was...? 1981 or somesuch).  Mark and I had both
used EMACS (thank you, Richard Stallman!), and wanted to be able to do 
SOME of the nifty EMACS like things in EDT.

What began as a editor hack-swap of EDTINI tricks turned into a paper and
a call to arms.  Our presentation was relegated to a small meeting room,
and the presentation--and it's overflow session--were both over capacity
for the room.  Six months later, the LSE project started.

I was supposed to go talk ABOUT edt for the editor wars session, but (I
confess) I slept through the time of the session (I had a cold over DECUS).
However, I did not go there to praise EDT, nor quite to bury it.  

I think EDT is a great text processor, but a much less useful software 
development tool than LSE/TPU or EMACS.  EDT is easy to learn and to
understand, and is a great first text processor to teach operator-trainees.
It even has a decent, if flawed, computer aided instruction course, if you
want to pay extra for it.  

Much as I would recommend standardizing on a MAKE-like tool for any kind of
large-ish software product (or even MMS/CMS if you have money and can figure
them out...), I would also recommend "investing" in getting your programmers
standardized on other software tools INCLUDING an editor.  On VMS, I would
probably make that a TPU produced editor.

This is probably going to earn me flames from the "oppose fascism in 
project management" types, but whereas I agree with them in my heart, my
experience indicates that people work together better when they use and 
can hack on the same tools--of which the editor is the last of which to be
standardized, generally (and deservedly?).

					Shava Nerad
					MIT VAX Resource Center
					Shava@isis.mit.edu
					Shava@athena.mit.edu
					617/253-7438

--the opinions expressed above have nothing to do with MIT, and may not--
--even jive with what I tell you if you ask me the same thing tomorrow.--