From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Lars Brinkhoff Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Is it the 40th Anniversary of Emacs Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2016 08:40:54 +0100 Organization: nocrew Message-ID: <86d1ib4rqx.fsf@molnjunk.nocrew.org> References: <20161103180155.0928b9db@jabberwock.cb.piermont.com> <20161103184656.5e0fdabc@jabberwock.cb.piermont.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: blaine.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: blaine.gmane.org 1478245381 9137 195.159.176.226 (4 Nov 2016 07:43:01 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@blaine.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2016 07:43:01 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3 (gnu/linux) To: emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Fri Nov 04 08:42:57 2016 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1c2Z9D-0000a3-9T for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Fri, 04 Nov 2016 08:42:47 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:36906 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1c2Z9G-0008Ep-0w for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Fri, 04 Nov 2016 03:42:50 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:40109) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1c2Z8i-0008Ek-2Z for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 04 Nov 2016 03:42:17 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1c2Z8e-0004MQ-Ue for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 04 Nov 2016 03:42:16 -0400 Original-Received: from [195.159.176.226] (port=49539 helo=blaine.gmane.org) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_128_CBC_SHA1:16) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1c2Z8e-0004LH-OP for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 04 Nov 2016 03:42:12 -0400 Original-Received: from list by blaine.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1c2Z7s-0007df-UM for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 04 Nov 2016 08:41:24 +0100 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Original-Lines: 113 Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@blaine.gmane.org Cancel-Lock: sha1:xbuffz8w0nIjyLK+fiJ6582R5gI= X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] X-Received-From: 195.159.176.226 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.21 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:209144 Archived-At: Perry E. Metzger wrote: > Pierre Lecocq wrote: >> Perry E. Metzger wrote: >>> If I'm not mistaken, the first Emacs appeared in late 1976. That >>> would make this approximately the 40th anniversary, which I think is >>> notable. Am I correct on that? >> >> Now, what month or day is another question! > > I suspect if anyone can tell us, it would be RMS, but I also suspect > that there was no single moment when it appeared. :) David Moon, 4 Jul 1978: In August 1976, a bunch of hackers decided it was time to write a new editor, using the sharable-library and named-commands (MM) technology developed by Tmacs, but intended for general use. Tmacs was not really set up to be used by anyone but its maintainers, and I think every user had a different set of key bindings, although by that time it was in use by perhaps eight or ten people. The new editor, which was initially called "?" because that was a command name which could not be typed to DDT, was supposed to take full advantage of the TV keyboards, to have a more sensible and consistent set of commands, to have good self-documentation, and to be faster than Tecmac. ? was intended to woo people away from Tecmac. Richard Stallman, 6 Jul 1978: 1) The name "?" was adopted, as far as I know, only because nobody had any good idea of a name to use. This case of dumb-striking was much more severe than usual. So all we could think of was "?" for "I don't know what it will nbe called". 2) The name E was chosen because I saw that E was one of the remaining single-letters left which didn't traditionally abbreviate anything. From E, EMACS followed. That it might confuse Stanford people was a bonus but not the fundamental motivation. In part, another motivation was the desire not to use "T", because of the desire to emphasize that the user would NOT be using TECO. 3) The work done by GLS was a) to consider a large number of possible command sets, and suggest many interesting possible commands, and b) to begin doing actual work (on the purifier and start-up). Although none of this code survived after a week or so, I might never have been able to start doing anything if left to myself. I often have trouble getting off the ground. 4) I'm not really sure why GLS stopped working on EMACS. I think he was too busy with class-related things, or some such. I had expected him to stay interested. 5) The first thing done in EMACS was the support software. The purifier, the loader macro scheme, the scheme for dumping an EMACS so that it could start up fast, and the self-documentation, were finished before there were any editing commands. I think this has helped bring about the quality of the self-documentation. 6) I do remember that :EJ was patched in by some TMACS person before I heard about it. 7) Most of the theory behind EMACS comes from TMACS, rather than TECMAC. From TECMAC come only individual commands. I guess that the ^X prefix character is from TECMAC also, but I'm surprised to hear that there was any macro package which didn't have prefixes. 8) The first ^R-macro written was an auto-fill space. It was my example of what could be done with such. I wrote it just after implementing redefinable characters. 9) I think that RMAIL is important, because it was the first demonstration that a reliable system program could be written in TECO, and the first example of one that was invoked other than by running TECO and typing TECO commands. I was able to document it without mentioning TECO at all until the place at the end where I mentioned the Altmode command. 10) When I first heard about TMACS, I assumed that the MM commands and the ^R commands were the same. When I found out that they used two separate mechanisms, I was amazed. Making those two be uniform was one of the primary initial goals of ?, which was going to do in a reasonable fashion what TMACS had explored with kludges. EMACS is full of kludges inside, but they are hidden away inside of Generate Library and EINIT. Guy Steele, 6 Jul 1978: The account of my involvement given by RMS is essentially accurate. I started ? because I was getting tired of the kludginess of the TCMAC command arrangement, and saw in other editors neat commands that could not be fit cleanly into TECMAC. I therefore decided to perform a total reorganization of the command structure, and carefully examine all the other existing TECO-based editors, such as RMODE, DOC, and the ever-popular TMACS. Most of my work involved playing with assignments of commands to keys, and running around organizing discussions and soliciting comments. I made an initial stab at a loader, and I think I invented (or re-invented) the notion of a compressing loader, and invented most of the specific conventions for the EMACS loader (such as using _ for a space), though these conventions were greatly refined later. It was at about this point that RMS and others took over the development work, and did a much better job, much faster, than I could have. For this reason, as well as the pressure of classes and the maintenance of LISP, I was happy to let others take over ?. Thus, while I provided initial impetus and much of the original user-level command structure, most of the development work and succeeding refinements is to the credit of other people. The name "?" was chosen not only because it was hard to type to DDT (one could win with '?), and so would force a more rational choice of name later, but also because the initial work was by Quux (GLS), strongly influenced by Moon, hence Quux/Moon => QM => Question Mark.