Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!uoregon!lth
From: lth@uoregon.uoregon.edu (Lars Thomas Hansen)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: Wanted: WordStar-like editor
Summary: Why on earth would you want WordStar?
Message-ID: <4893@uoregon.uoregon.edu>
Date: 12 Jun 89 22:35:37 GMT
References: <26464@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <2167@trantor.harris-atd.com> <1309@hounix.UUCP> <6%filbo@ssyx.ucsc.edu>
Reply-To: lth@drizzle.UUCP (Lars Thomas Hansen)
Organization: University of Oregon, Computer Science, Eugene OR
Lines: 31

In article <6%filbo@ssyx.ucsc.edu> filbo@ssyx.ucsc.edu (Bela Lubkin) writes:
>I am astonished that no CP/M or MS-DOS programmer, frustrated with VI and
>EMACS, has yet written a simple WS-based programmer's editor (akin to the
>Turbo language editors).

I am one of those CP/M *and* MS-DOS programmers, and I grew up with WS. I
thought it was the greatest editor there could possibly be. What more could
a programmer want in an editor?

As it turned out, programmers want a lot more. The ability to edit several
files at once, for example, is something I (now) demand from my editor. To have
several views of the same file is also practical in certain situations.

I have switched to using EMACS on this machine (a VAX under BSD4.3) and I use
MicroEMACS on my PC. You'd be amazed at the amount of trouble I go through
to avoid the Turbo editors...

More to the point, it is a question of POWER -- WordStar, however nice it
might be (I still use it for wordprocessing :-) is simply not powerful
enough to perform all the services that a programmer wants from his(her)
editor, especially when that programmer has been spoiled with EMACS or
an equal editor. [However, solutions have been found: A company I know
of, used to using WS for editing work, acknowledged that WS was not
powerful enough, and instead of switching editors they wrote a multi-view
multi-file WS-clone.]

If you program under CP/M you might not find EMACS or its relatives
available to you. Otherwise, I'd rather suggest you switch editors than
try to look for an (elusive) WS-clone.

--lars