Re: [9fans] Emacs

[Digby Tarvin <digbyt@acm.org>]

Unfortunately, as you have discovered, porting of certain 'legacy'
applications to Plan9 (EMACS and X spring to mind) is more a religious than
a technical issue. Indeed, on this list Plan9 is closer to a religion that a
tool - and being a research system, I think a certain idealism on the part
of the developers is justified.

I have used ed, vi and emacs to roughly the same extent over the years,
and spent a bit of time learning sam and acme, neither of which I have had
an opportunity to really use except in my spare time, but I have learned
them well enough to be happy to use them for serious editing and development
if I had to.

They all have their advantages and disadvantages, and I often switch between
emacs and vi in a single editing session if something I want to do is
more easily done in the other editor.

If I had to characterise them briefly, I would say
 Ed was a very nice, consistent regular expression based line editor.
 vi is a bit of a schizophrenic combination of ed with a screen editor
 sam is a more consistent extension of ed to screen editing and WIMP
 emacs is a powerful but not easy to learn programmable keyboard based
  screen editor
 acme is emacs like, in the sense of attempting to be an all encompassing
  development environment, but better integrated with (but limited to) a
  WIMP environment.

I think the Plan9 offerings are elegant and powerful, but would still like
to have emacs or vi on the system for two reasons

1.  For a beginner, it is extremely frustrating trying to explore and configure
a system with an unfamiliar editor. When I first installed Plan9 (2nd Ed)
I found myself initially exporting a file system from Unix so that I could
go back to a Unix terminal when ever I needed to edit a file. I taught myself
to use SAM later, using a Unix resident version.

2.  There are times when a bitmapped display and a three button mouse are not
available, and it would be nice to have a fall back for use in these
circumstances. For instance, when using my laptop on a plane, I am stuck
with the internal two-button pointing device, and this seriously limits
the usability of acme.

I also think it would be a better advertisement for the new editors if
people adopted them voluntarily, rather than because nothing else is
available. But I suppose there is a fear some wouldn't bother learning the
new editors if a familiar one was available.

Regardless of technical merits, the most powerful editor, as with operating
systems, will always be the one you are most familiar with. It takes time
and effort to reach a point where you can make a fair comparison with a
new one.

All editors have their uses. There are times when ed is still my editor of
choice - for instance when I am telneting into a system in Australia and
getting equivalent to about 300 baud, with about 10 seconds between
hitting a key and seeing the character echoed. Microemacs is very
useful because it runs on the most diverse selection of operating.

I wouldn't expect or ask the Plan9 developers to spend time on such ports,
but if someone else decided to port emacs, I would certainly put a copy
on my system.

Regards,
DigbyT

> Thank you all very much for all your input.  I was
> able to adjust my monitor settings which made
> looking at things a lot easier.
>
> Although I received specific instructions on how to find
> plan9.ini (thank you!), I already figured it out on my own last night.
> While figuring it out I learned more about Plan 9 and had
> a lot of fun.  I enjoy working with the system.
>
> I appreciate all your input regarding acme and sam.  You
> have convinced me to re-look at them with an open mind.
>
> Instead of immediately starting on my big project, I have decided
> to embark on a much smaller project using Plan 9.
>
> Thanks again for all the help and encouragement.
>
> Blake McBride
>
--
Digby R. S. Tarvin                                              digbyt@acm.org
http://www.cthulhu.dircon.co.uk