Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!umd5!purdue!i.cc.purdue.edu!j.cc.purdue.edu!pur-ee!uiucdcs!snail!carroll
From: carroll@snail.CS.UIUC.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: Word processing on Unix
Message-ID: <10000003@snail>
Date: 4 May 88 17:32:00 GMT
References: <449@novavax.UUCP>
Lines: 21
Nf-ID: #R:novavax.UUCP:449:snail:10000003:000:1210
Nf-From: snail.CS.UIUC.EDU!carroll    May  4 12:32:00 1988


/* Written  3:42 pm  Apr 28, 1988 by mic@hpesrgd.HP.COM in snail:comp.editors */
GNU EMACS will meet your needs nicely.
/* End of text from snail:comp.editors */

"Nicely" depends on how much disk space/processor time you have floating
around. We put GNU-EMACS up on a 3b2/310, and it was basically unusable
because it was *SO* slow. It would take from 30 to 60 seconds to start up,
and that was for the basic version. I'd hate to see what would happen
if you had a lot of custom code files. Everything else was similarly
slow. Page plotting was a wait and see operation, and searching was
coffee break time. Just typing in text was painful, since it would lag
behind my typing as much as a line or so a lot of the time.  Even on a Sun
3/50, I found that GNU-EMACS lags behind my typing enough to approximately
triple my error rate (since I lose key/screen correlation). I'd try it
out on the target system before I committed to using it. If you don't
type very fast, it might be ok.

Alan M. Carroll		amc@woodshop.cs.uiuc.edu	carroll@s.cs.uiuc.edu
Grad Student (TA) / U of Ill - Urbana ...{ihnp4,convex}!uiucdcs!woodshop!amc
	"Too many fools who don't think twice
	 Too many ways to pay the price"  - AP & EW