X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit
X-Google-Thread: fbb9d,6926c2ff283da566
X-Google-Attributes: gidfbb9d,public
X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1994-09-09 14:43:44 PST
Path: 
 nntp.gmd.de!Germany.EU.net!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!sundog.tiac.net!news.sprintlink.net!sashimi.wwa.com!not-for-mail
From: billw@glare.cisco.com (William )
Newsgroups: rec.arts.ascii
Subject: Talk: Emacs
Date: 9 Sep 1994 16:43:44 -0500
Organization: cisco Systems, Inc.
Lines: 26
Sender: boba@wwa.com
Approved: boba@wwa.com
Message-ID: <34qkug$7tm@gagme.wwa.com>
References: <338mj6$jm9@gagme.wwa.com> <34hqo7$e6n@gagme.wwa.com>
	<34ln8i$8ov@gagme.wwa.com> <34mssm$bi8@gagme.wwa.com>
	<34pdkq$he5@gagme.wwa.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: gagme.wwa.com


    >Oh? The most popular editor in the world of Unix? Why don't I see anybody
    >here using it?

    Because it isn't very user-friendly. It's less strange than vi, but it's
    still very kludgy. Despite that, Emacs is still the most popular editor in
    the world of UNIX, mainly because it's very powerful; hacker types like it.

Also, some unix admin manuals recomend against installing it, because it is
BIG and uses a lot of resources, whether active or just sitting on disk.
Fortunately for those used to emacs, there are various "tiny" versions as
well.  While these usually don't support the more esoteric abilities of
"real" EMACS (picture mode, new reading, etc), at least the basic commands
and philosphies are maintained.

True Emacs is more than an editor, it's also provides a text processing
language.  Most modern EMACS provide a powerful enough langauge that you
can write just about anything in it.

My original excuse for becoming an emacs user was that it ran on everything
I was interested in: tops10, tops20, ITS, CPM, and even UNIX...  Emacs
clones for MSDOS preceeded other (large computer) editor ports by a couple
years, too.

BillW