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From: mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us (Marc Unangst)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: A small, fast editor required...
Message-ID: <433.247B5B0B@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us>
Date: 25 May 89 01:10:22 GMT
References: <1511@mtunb.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us
Organization: A neat desk is a sign of a crazy person.
Lines: 50

In article <1511@mtunb.ATT.COM>, dmt@mtunb.ATT.COM (Dave Tutelman) writes:
 >   SEVERE PROBLEM: It doesn't handle tabs at all well.  (I consider the
 >        ONLY proper handling of tabs to be to retain it as a single
 >        tab character, but display it on the screen interpreted to the
 >        next tab stop.  Qedit (the latest version I've seen) has three or
 >        four different WRONG ways to do it.

Agreed.  The most annoying thing about the tab handling is when you have
it set to expand tabs to spaces on-screen, but not when it saves to a file,
you can't backspace over a tab and have the cursor back up to the previous
tab space, like it should.  This is an extreme annoyance when you are
editing a C program with it, because I frequently have to go back to
the previous indentation level (maybe it's only a one-statement if, so
I don't need the braces).  With Qedit, I have to watch carefully and
make sure I hit enough backspaces to bring me back far enough, but not
too far.  If the last code that was at the previous level has scrolled
off the screen, it's time to start counting characters...

This is really the only reason I use the Turbo C integrated development
environment.  Because I have yet to find an Emacs implimentation that
comes with sufficient documentation (most of them only come with some
notes on how to use that specific version, and assume that you already
know how to use Emacs), I have not been able to learn how to use it.

Aside: The manual for MicroEmacs, which was recently posted to c.b.i.p,
did not format correctly when my printer was set for 66-line pages,
8-space tabs, and 80 characters per line.  In some places, there were
almost 90 or 95 characters in a line, and in others, there were only
about 40-50, with very large margins.  It almost looked like parts
were meant for printing in a 12cpi font, and others in a 10cpi font.

There is also another large limitation that makes Qedit less-than-perfect.
Although Qedit is very fast in going from the beginning of the file to
the end (for example), because it always loads the entire file into
memory, this limits your file size to a maximum of about 370K on a 640K
machine.  As far as I know, Qedit will not use EMS or extended memory
to hold parts of the file, or for swapping.  I would be willing to
sacrifice some speed if it could be made to use files as large as the
disk (with swapping).

Another, smaller limitation, is the fact that you have to use a separate
program to configure it.  Although this would probably add significantly
to the code size of Qedit, it would probably be worth it.

--  
Marc Unangst
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