Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!iuvax!bsu-cs!neubauer
From: neubauer@bsu-cs.UUCP (Paul Neubauer)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: UNIX needs a real text editor
Message-ID: <6504@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Date: 4 Apr 89 16:10:18 GMT
References: <248@usl-pc.usl.edu> <10099@ihlpb.ATT.COM> <3861@mipos3.intel.com>
Reply-To: neubauer@bsu-cs.UUCP (Paul Neubauer)
Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana
Lines: 40

In article <3861@mipos3.intel.com> woodstock@hobbes.intel.com (Nate Hess) writes:
>[TPU example deleted.]
>Hmmm.  Easier for *you*, yes, not easier for me.  I think that lisp is
>an excellent choice as an editor's "native: language.  It's a big win to
>have the language that you write your editor init file with be the same
>language that you type to the editor's command interpreter.  If you're
>in TPU, looking at a buffer containing the TPU code you defined in your
>example, how easy is it to change the buffer, and then instantly
>re-evaluate the definition, so that the modified procedure is now
>available in your editing session?

Actually, that is exactly how TPU does work.  I even have a key bound to the
equivalent of reevaluating a buffer for when I am editing .TPU source files,
but even if I did not, it is not difficult to say 'execute(current_buffer)'
from the command line (similar to M-x).

>This might very well be the case.  TPU is, however, infinitely
>inefficient on VAXen running, say, Ultrix(tm, no doubt).  It has been
>optimized to run on VAXen under VMS.  Emacs, on the other hand, will run
>on VAX under VMS, 4.3BSD, Ultrix, etc., etc.  In fact, I've taken 200
>line .emacs files under Ultrix, transferred them to VMS, and had the
>exact same functionality (minus VMS BD'ed-ness) as on Ultrix.  Porting
>my Emacs environment to my Sun 386i was as simple as rcp'ing my .emacs
>file.

This is indeed the biggest problem with TPU.  In fact, it is really worse
than you have suggested because TPU does not even use DEC's method of making
programs terminal-independent.  VT dependence is hard-coded right into TPU.
(Yes, I know that most terminals nowadays are ANSI, but there are still
those of us who sometimes have to use other things as terminals and it is a
real pain in the behind to have to keep a different, non-DEC, editor
available just so that we can edit something on those occasions.)  I like
TPU, but it is certainly far from perfect, even if we are talking about the
heavily customized versions of editors created with the TPU language and not
DEC's stupidly crippled default TPU editing interfaces.


-- 
Paul Neubauer         neubauer@bsu-cs.bsu.edu        neubauer@bsu-cs.UUCP
                      <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!neubauer