[TUHS] UK written UNIX line editor in early 80s?

[TUHS] UK written UNIX line editor in early 80s?

[Steve Mynott]

In the autumn of 1984 as an undergrad at Durham University (UK) I
remember using a Pascal compiler (pc) on a BSD4.1 system (bumped after
several months to 4.1c and running I would guess on a small VAX?) and
using a strange line editor (probably because the terminal had crude
screen handling capabilities?).

I can't remember much about it other than it seemed to resemble ex.  I
think I was told it was written in the UK and doing some Googling
suggests it may have been "em" (Editor for Mortals) from Queen Mary
College.

However, the time frame for that editor was late 70s and it would have
been quite old by 1984. So my current theory is that it was a fork
(maybe with a different name) or later version?

Anyone use this editor or anything similar around 1984?

-- 
4096R/EA75174B Steve Mynott <steve.mynott at gmail.com>

[TUHS] UK written UNIX line editor in early 80s?

[Adam Sampson]

Steve Mynott <steve.mynott at gmail.com> writes:

> In the autumn of 1984 as an undergrad at Durham University [...] a
> strange line editor [...] it seemed to resemble ex.  I think I was
> told it was written in the UK [...]

ECCE, maybe? This originated at Edinburgh in the late 60s and was ported
to all sorts of languages and platforms. See the DCS archive for many
versions (including several Unix ports with mid-80s dates) and manuals:

http://history.dcs.ed.ac.uk/archive/apps/ecce/

-- 
Adam Sampson <ats at offog.org>                         <http://offog.org/>

[TUHS] UK written UNIX line editor in early 80s?

[Alec Muffett]

On 13 April 2017 at 21:35, Adam Sampson <ats at offog.org> wrote:

> Steve Mynott <steve.mynott at gmail.com> writes:
>
> > In the autumn of 1984 as an undergrad at Durham University [...] a
> > strange line editor [...] it seemed to resemble ex.  I think I was
> > told it was written in the UK [...]
>
> ECCE, maybe? This originated at Edinburgh in the late 60s and was ported
> to all sorts of languages and platforms. See the DCS archive for many
> versions (including several Unix ports with mid-80s dates) and manuals:
>

I vaguely remember hearing of ecce, I think; however many British
universities in the 1980s that I knew (largely from the student-hacker
community) ran the children of an editor called GEORGE descended from an
old ICL operating system:

- http://www.icl1900.co.uk/g3/editor.html (user doc)
- http://sw.ccs.bcs.org/CCs/g3/LeedsDoc/sect-e.htm (manual)
- http://sw.ccs.bcs.org/CCs/g3/ (source)

The variant at UCL was called "gedit" and hosted on OS/4000 (
https://dropsafe.crypticide.com/article/3197)

The variant at Aberystwyth was called "ge" and hosted on GECOS-3 and
various Unixen

There were many others; having infected (?) the UK community in the 1970s
(?) it became a favourite.

    -a

ps: as a friend likes to point out, OS/4000, as a B2-secure (ha)
military-grade operating system, had some fabulous syntax. The equivalent
to Unix's "rm -rf ~" would be:

  "FCOPY USER SINK TRACE DESTROY"

...which basically implemented a recursive "mv" to /dev/null, directories
included.

-- 
http://dropsafe.crypticide.com/aboutalecm
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[TUHS] UK written UNIX line editor in early 80s?

[Alec Muffett]

excuse the typo, that should be GCOS-3, though the unix relationship is
obvious.
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[TUHS] UK written UNIX line editor in early 80s?

[Warren Toomey]

http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Applications/Em_Editor/

Out of range, back soon. Warren
-- 
Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
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