Xref: utzoo comp.misc:5535 comp.editors:558 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!gaynor From: gaynor@athos.rutgers.edu (Silver) Newsgroups: comp.misc,comp.editors Subject: Re: UNIX needs a real text editor Message-ID: Date: 17 Mar 89 03:20:42 GMT References: <222@imspw6.UUCP> <252@torch.UUCP> <2112@mister-curious.sw.mcc.com> <743@stag.UUCP> <745@stag.UUCP> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 39 > Unfortunately, folding in GNU, as you are referring to it, isn't much use > (unless things have changed drastically in a newer version of GNU Emacs than > I have). You'd be surprised... Unfortunately, (1) all the scanning through lines collapsed under selective-display is frighteningly inefficient, and (2) narrow-to-region, I feel, was improperly implemented. I think it should have been implemented like folds, thus called narrow-away-region, and maintain a tree of narrowings in the buffer. A little self-hype here, I voiced that little opinion in comp.emacs a couple of years ago, but got no responses. > Folding really becomes useful when all the things you have folded are carried > across between edit sessions and when all the 'commands' in the editor really > 'understand' folding. Agreed. Such would have been easily accomplished with my narrow-away-region, the `map-file' would be trivial to read and write. Sniff, sniff. > And since I didn't like the idea of embedding special characters inside of my > source files to 'help out' the editor True enough. I agree, working around the current implementation can be a bitch. > emacs <-> basic...big, slow, but you can do a lot of reprogramming > around the rich command set...note that this is > interpreted tokenized basic, not compiled. > ... > cased <-> C...a higher level (case) editor that allows truly compiled-in > modules and integrates nicely into the environment. This > editor would be both programmable and extensible (i.e you > can not only program based on the current libc.a, but you > can also develop your own low level routines if you need > to). Unfortunately, I still haven't found such an editor. Note that GNU Emacs is a cased editor of its own Lisp extension language. It's only drawback is that it does not compile to native machine code. Regards, [Ag] gaynor@rutgers.edu