CASTalk.com

On Tue, 04 Jan 2005 00:28:36 GMT, "Nicholas O. Lindan" <see@sig.com>
wrote:

[...]

Intel had a pretty awful one, Credit(?), that should have
been called 'Bankrupt'.

When I first used CREDIT , about 1983, I thought I'd died and went to
heaven. Of course, the only other editors I'd used to that time were
line editors (or worse), along the lines of (and including) MS-DOS'
edlin. CREDIT (which stood for something like CRt EDITor) was a
full-screen editor, and allowed me to move the cursor wherever I
wanted and just start typing (or deleting). Stone simple and very
intuitive.

I did get angry with it one day, though. Our MDS systems had two
floppy drives, one containing the ISIS system software (including
CREDIT), and the other free for data. I spent about two hours
composing a report. When I was done, I tried to save the file. I
neglected to specify the data disk, so CREDIT tried to save it to the
system disk. No room. CREDIT dies with an error message. Work gone.
Sigh.

The second version of the report was much better, though. I guess
Fred Brooks' advice to "write one to throw away" applies to reports as
well. It was a "lessons learned" memo written just before I left a
completed project to start on a new one. The new project had EMACS.
I never looked back.

Regards,

-=Dave
--
Change is inevitable, progress is not.

On Wed, 5 Jan 2005 09:23:14 -0500, "Rufus V. Smith" <nospam@nospam.com> wrote:

Personally, I loved TECO.

Always fun to run "hunt the wumpus" from it, too!

Jon

mc wrote:

Use vi, the one true editor... ;-)

And Jimmy Carter is still President, right? :) :)

Nice one ;-)

I'll remember that for the future.

Ian

--
Ian Bell

Joop wrote:

Yes, is it not wonderful that we are so pleased with a function that
was already present in Wordstar(clones) 20 years ago. It did do
rectangular block copies (at least the later versions)

Indeed. My favorite text editor (Electric Blackboard) did column-mode
copies on a Z80- CP/M system (and also edited files up to 1MB on a
system with 64KB of RAM at a time when I could find no other editor that
could handle a file bigger than RAM.)

Bill

On Wed, 5 Jan 2005 09:23:14 -0500, "Rufus V. Smith"
<nospam@nospam.com> wrote:

"Ian Bell" <ruffrecords@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:creife$f3i$2@slavica.ukpost.com...
[...]

Emacs - no contest.

[...]

Of course, that (Emacs) also is often nominated as the *best*.

Personally, I loved TECO.

EMACS (despite the jokes about "Eight Meg And Constantly Swapping," or
"Esc Meta Alt Ctrl Shift") was originally written as a set of macros
(Editing MACroS, though EMACS was not the original name -- something
like "Display Editimg Macros") to TECO (Tape Editor and COrrector).

Regards,

-=Dave
--
Change is inevitable, progress is not.

Joop wrote:

Guy Macon <_see.web.page_@_www.guymacon.com_> wrote:


MetalHead wrote:


I've been using UltraEdit and have been really happy with it. You can
configure almost everything about it and it works with large files.
supports all the usual syntax coloring and such (if you want it) and has
been extremely reliable. You can try it for free and registering it
costs $30US the last time I looked. WWW.ultraedit.com

The column mode saves a huge amount of time when adjusting indenting.
Highly recommended.


Yes, is it not wonderful that we are so pleased with a function that
was already present in Wordstar(clones) 20 years ago. It did do
rectangular block copies (at least the later versions)

I used Wordstar (in Text Mode) as a programming editor. It was an
enormous improvement over ed or whatever the CPM editor was called.

Even the text editor that came with Turbo Pascal under CPM was an
improvement over the stock CPM editor!

Bob

Rufus V. Smith wrote:

Ian Bell wrote...

Emacs - no contest.

Of course, that (Emacs) also is often nominated as the *best*.

Emacs is like DNA; you can do amazing things with it,
but it takes a long time to figure out how.




(This is the first time I have ever written something, looked
at it, and decided to put it in my own quote file...)

CREDIT, at the time was great. It is just that it was primitive
compared to later editing programs. One big problem was that we had
two machines, one old one with CREDIT and a newer one with ALTER.
IIRC ctrl-D on ALTER was delete word (or line, or something else
useful - it was 20 years ago ;-) ) on CREDIT ctrl-D aborted the
session, followed by loud swearing.

Ian

Rufus V. Smith wrote:

"Ian Bell" <ruffrecords@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:creife$f3i$2@slavica.ukpost.com...
Nicholas O. Lindan wrote:

There will never be agreement on the best.

So, nominations for the _worst_ text editor:


Emacs - no contest.

Ian
--
Ian Bell

Of course, that (Emacs) also is often nominated as the *best*.

Only because its users are particularly fanatical.

IAn

--
Ian Bell

Ian Bell <ruffrecords@yahoo.com> wrote in news:crjvfh$ai1$6
@slavica.ukpost.com:

Rufus V. Smith wrote:


"Ian Bell" <ruffrecords@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:creife$f3i$2@slavica.ukpost.com...
Nicholas O. Lindan wrote:

There will never be agreement on the best.

So, nominations for the _worst_ text editor:

Emacs - no contest.

Of course, that (Emacs) also is often nominated as the *best*.

Only because its users are particularly fanatical.

As opposed to the users of other editors who claim the same things?

The best editor is whatever works best for you for what you need to do,
for some that appears to be Emacs, for others it is a wide variety of
other editors.

--
Richard

Richard wrote:

Ian Bell <ruffrecords@yahoo.com> wrote in news:crjvfh$ai1$6
@slavica.ukpost.com:

Rufus V. Smith wrote:


"Ian Bell" <ruffrecords@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:creife$f3i$2@slavica.ukpost.com...
Nicholas O. Lindan wrote:

There will never be agreement on the best.

So, nominations for the _worst_ text editor:

Emacs - no contest.

Of course, that (Emacs) also is often nominated as the *best*.

Only because its users are particularly fanatical.


As opposed to the users of other editors who claim the same things?

No, many can be quite fanatical too. However, IME EMACS users are the
*most* fanatical.

The best editor is whatever works best for you for what you need to do,
for some that appears to be Emacs, for others it is a wide variety of
other editors.

Precisely.

IAn

--
Ian Bell

Ian Bell <ruffrecords@yahoo.com> wrote in news:crkbj5$bvi$1
@slavica.ukpost.com:

Richard wrote:

Ian Bell <ruffrecords@yahoo.com> wrote in news:crjvfh$ai1$6
@slavica.ukpost.com:

Rufus V. Smith wrote:


"Ian Bell" <ruffrecords@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:creife$f3i$2@slavica.ukpost.com...
Nicholas O. Lindan wrote:

There will never be agreement on the best.

So, nominations for the _worst_ text editor:

Emacs - no contest.

Of course, that (Emacs) also is often nominated as the *best*.

Only because its users are particularly fanatical.


As opposed to the users of other editors who claim the same things?

No, many can be quite fanatical too. However, IME EMACS users are the
*most* fanatical.

I find vi users to be equally as fanatical. Generally those are the two
groups that I find to be most fanatical about the subject.

--
Richard

Richard wrote:

Ian Bell <ruffrecords@yahoo.com> wrote in news:crkbj5$bvi$1
@slavica.ukpost.com:

Richard wrote:

Ian Bell <ruffrecords@yahoo.com> wrote in news:crjvfh$ai1$6
@slavica.ukpost.com:

Rufus V. Smith wrote:


"Ian Bell" <ruffrecords@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:creife$f3i$2@slavica.ukpost.com...
Nicholas O. Lindan wrote:

There will never be agreement on the best.

So, nominations for the _worst_ text editor:

Emacs - no contest.

Of course, that (Emacs) also is often nominated as the *best*.

Only because its users are particularly fanatical.


As opposed to the users of other editors who claim the same things?

No, many can be quite fanatical too. However, IME EMACS users are the
*most* fanatical.

I find vi users to be equally as fanatical. Generally those are the two
groups that I find to be most fanatical about the subject.

I would agree that vi users are at least a very close second when it comes
to fanaticism.

ian
--
Ian Bell

"Richard" <RichardRapier@netscape.net> wrote

The best editor is whatever works best for you ...

I don't know that I could ever find what works 'best' for
me. I'd spend all my time playing around with text editors.

My working definition of "The Best Text Editor" is

"The Best Text Editor is the one I use right now.
I know it is the best because I use it. If it
wasn't the best then I wouldn't use it, would I?
This editor is so good I have used it all my life,
I have never found a need to even look at anything
else."

--
Nicholas O. Lindan, Cleveland, Ohio
Consulting Engineer: Electronics; Informatics; Photonics.
Remove spaces etc. to reply: n o lindan at net com dot com
psst.. want to buy an f-stop timer? nolindan.com/da/fstop/

"Neil Bradley" <nb_no_spam@synthcom.com> writes:

What do all of you embedded systems guys use these days?

GNU Emacs.

I'd like something more modern with Brief emulation capabilities
(pay or free - doesn't matter).

Free, included with GNU Emacs. It's called "crisp mode". I've
never used it so I can't comment on how good the emulation is.

I'd personally recommend learning native Emacs though. It's not
that difficult, and there's a built-in tutorial.