Path: utzoo!yunexus!telly!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!shelby!portia!ssyx.ucsc.edu!ulmo
From: ulmo@ssyx.ucsc.edu
Newsgroups: gnu.emacs
Subject: Various small comments about Emacs
         (moved from the end of a bug report)
Message-ID: <1989JE8.090959,4635;ULMO@SSYX.UCSC.EDU>
Date: 8 Jun 89 09:15:33 GMT
Article-I.D.: SSYX.1989JE8.090959,4635;ULMO
Sender: USENET News System <news@Portia.stanford.edu>
Lines: 39

These impressions are some that I have had of the Emacs editor so far.

Does anyone have any patches or modifications for GNU Emacs which will make it
case insensitive in all appropriate locations?  (I think it's stupid Unix and
C are case sensitive at all, and have often wondered how easy it would be to
fix that on a system of my own).

more comments:
- Using ln to link a file and then edit it, Emacs will save the old version
  associated with the same old link, and the file will end up with a new
  inode, link structure, file descriptor, directory entry, etc.
  This isn't always intended or understood by the user (me),
  although I can see benefits and hardships both ways.
- Versions.  How easy is it to ask Emacs to use a new name for each version
  of a file I make (ITS-wise, where each version gets something.83383,
  or something better dealing with more intricate version #s would be
  nice too) and deal with it appropriately?  I guess this is a fundamental
  problem with Unix:  it calls many things Files (a concept I am absolutely
  sick of), and doesn't even bother to put file type information anywhere --
  the file is anyone's guess as to what it is (so common practices are to
  put file type information in the calling environment (an unportable
  method) or in the file itself (something which gets in the way of
  data representation).  Bleah.
- Multitasking.  Arggh!  Why do I have to be stuck with one command line
  in an otherwise fairly powerful system?  Why must I sit waiting for one
  command to finish for me to figure out what to type for another,
  or even ^Z out for god's sake?  The worst thing is wanting to look
  something up, and realizing that there is no way to do that.
- Incremental compilation (automatic).  What's this thing about me
  having to manually type byte-compile?

I guess I just haven't used Emacs for 20 years and gotten used to
The Way it Should Be, so some of this is not exactly right on target.

Also, is there a binary mode, complete with various Hex and Ascii
translation guides?  This would greatly simplify the task
of people like me who like to look and modify a file in its full 8 bits.

Bleah, it's late, but I think this all makes some sense.