Oldest Emacs alive

Oldest Emacs alive

[Lars Brinkhoff]

FYI, I have TECO EMACS 24 from November 1976 running.

Re: Oldest Emacs alive

[Paul Eggert]

Lars Brinkhoff wrote:
> FYI, I have TECO EMACS 24 from November 1976 running.

Cool! How fast is it? Did you use it to compose and send that email? :-)

Perhaps we should mention TECO EMACS in etc/HISTORY, with an URL to a web page 
that contains the details (is there such a page?).

Re: Oldest Emacs alive

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Paul Eggert wrote:
> Lars Brinkhoff wrote:
>> FYI, I have TECO EMACS 24 from November 1976 running.
> Cool! How fast is it? Did you use it to compose and send that email? :-)

It's fine for entering and editing text.  But then it's running in a
PDP-10 emulator which is probably faster than the original hardware.

I don't think there was a TECO package for sending email in 1976. :-)
Recall that EMACS just got started earlier that year.

> Perhaps we should mention TECO EMACS in etc/HISTORY, with an URL to a
> web page that contains the details (is there such a page?).

I just got this running, so I haven't made any proper documentation yet.
Some details are in a GitHub issue, and the files will be in my Emacs
history repository.

http://github.com/PDP-10/its/issues/887
http://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/emacs-history

Re: Oldest Emacs alive

[Uwe Brauer]

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>>> "Lars" == Lars Brinkhoff <lars@nocrew.org> writes:

   > Paul Eggert wrote:
   > http://github.com/PDP-10/its/issues/887
   > http://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/emacs-history


I just visited the last link. Three comments.

    1. The dates for XEmacs should be, at least, 1994-2015. That was the
       year (I think it was October when Steve Turnbull proposed to
       close the project). I am however not sure about 1994, according
       to my memory it should be 1992.

    2. Aidan Kehoe continues to send patches to xemacs-beta and releases
       xemacs 21.5. So you maybe you should talk to him whether Xemacs
       is really dead or not. Maybe this concerns only the 21.4.X
       series.

    3. You might consider to mention SXemacs, a 21.4 fork.

Uwe Brauer 

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Re: Oldest Emacs alive

[Paul Eggert]

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Thanks for the pointers. I installed the first attached patch into the emacs-26 
branch. (Sorry about misspelling your name in the commit message; fixed in the 
second attached patch.)

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From f205928d1f93f4373d755ca91805a88e022ac414 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2018 08:25:46 -0700
Subject: [PATCH] * etc/HISTORY: Cite Brinkoff on early history.

---
 etc/HISTORY | 7 ++++---
 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/etc/HISTORY b/etc/HISTORY
index ba86182..b239904 100644
--- a/etc/HISTORY
+++ b/etc/HISTORY
@@ -12,10 +12,11 @@ development is sketchy, the following text summarizes what is known.
 EMACS started out as a set of macros atop the TECO text editor, and
 was first operational in late 1976.  It was inspired by earlier work
 such as the E editor of Stanford, and was based on older TECO macro
-sets.  EMACS in turn inspired several similar editors.  See:
-Stallman RM. EMACS: The Extensible, Customizable Self-Documenting
-Display Editor.  AI Memo 519a, MIT, 1981-03-26
+sets.  See: Stallman RM. EMACS: The Extensible, Customizable
+Self-Documenting Display Editor.  AI Memo 519a, MIT, 1981-03-26
 <http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/5736/AIM-519A.pdf>.
+EMACS in turn inspired several similar editors.  For a summary of
+this history, see <https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/emacs-history>.
 
 In 1984, work began on GNU Emacs, a fresh implementation designed to
 run on GNU and GNU-like systems, with a full-featured Lisp at its
-- 
2.7.4


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From fc5cae731cede7e00f3f2d40d6577537f872d439 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2018 08:36:30 -0700
Subject: [PATCH] ; Fix ChangeLog typo.

---
 ChangeLog.3 | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/ChangeLog.3 b/ChangeLog.3
index c05303c..a0a4794 100644
--- a/ChangeLog.3
+++ b/ChangeLog.3
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 2018-07-01  Paul Eggert  <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
 
-	* etc/HISTORY: Cite Brinkoff on early history.
+	* etc/HISTORY: Cite Brinkhoff on early history.
 
 2018-07-01  Martin Rudalics  <rudalics@gmx.at>
 
-- 
2.7.4

Re: Oldest Emacs alive

[Joshua Branson]

Lars Brinkhoff <lars@nocrew.org> writes:

> FYI, I have TECO EMACS 24 from November 1976 running.


Is this just for fun?

Re: Oldest Emacs alive

[Filipp Gunbin]

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On 01/07/2018 10:17 +0200, Uwe Brauer wrote:

>     1. The dates for XEmacs should be, at least, 1994-2015. That was the
>        year (I think it was October when Steve Turnbull proposed to
>        close the project). I am however not sure about 1994, according
>        to my memory it should be 1992.
>
>     2. Aidan Kehoe continues to send patches to xemacs-beta and releases
>        xemacs 21.5. So you maybe you should talk to him whether Xemacs
>        is really dead or not. Maybe this concerns only the 21.4.X
>        series.

I wonder if there are any good technical ideas/solutions which were done
in XEmacs and could be added in GNU Emacs..  That would require, of
course, good knowledge of both.

Filipp

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Re: Oldest Emacs alive

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > I don't think there was a TECO package for sending email in 1976. :-)
  > Recall that EMACS just got started earlier that year.

ISTR that Rmail predated EMACS, and I expect I didn't wait long after
EMACS was good enough to edit with to arrange to run Rmail in EMACS.

However, whatever it did to send a message on ITS would need to be changed.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Oldest Emacs alive

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Richard Stallman wrote:
>> I don't think there was a TECO package for sending email in 1976. :-)
>> Recall that EMACS just got started earlier that year.
>
> ISTR that Rmail predated EMACS, and I expect I didn't wait long after
> EMACS was good enough to edit with to arrange to run Rmail in EMACS.

Yes, I see you are right.  I opened EMACS' purified TECO file and indeed
there are references to Rmail: "Temporarily loads up :EJ version of
Rmail and runs in own environment."

Curiosly, there is no M-X extended commands facility in this early
EMACS.  You have to type <ALTMODE> (to get a TECO minibuffer) and then
MM Rmail<ALTMODE><ALTMODE>.  Unfortunately, I don't have the RMAIL file,
so I get ".TECO.;DSK:[RMAX] >   FILE NOT FOUND?"

By the way, if anyone wants to try this, let me know in private email.
Be prepared to compile a SUPDUP client.

Re: Oldest Emacs alive

[Fabrice Popineau]

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2018-07-02 3:31 GMT+02:00 Filipp Gunbin <fgunbin@fastmail.fm>:

> On 01/07/2018 10:17 +0200, Uwe Brauer wrote:
>
> >     1. The dates for XEmacs should be, at least, 1994-2015. That was the
> >        year (I think it was October when Steve Turnbull proposed to
> >        close the project). I am however not sure about 1994, according
> >        to my memory it should be 1992.
> >
> >     2. Aidan Kehoe continues to send patches to xemacs-beta and releases
> >        xemacs 21.5. So you maybe you should talk to him whether Xemacs
> >        is really dead or not. Maybe this concerns only the 21.4.X
> >        series.
>
> I wonder if there are any good technical ideas/solutions which were done
> in XEmacs and could be added in GNU Emacs..  That would require, of
> course, good knowledge of both.
>

Maybe this :

https://crestani.de/xemacs/pdf/thesis-newgc.pdf

How does it compare to the current GNU EMacs GC ?

Fabrice

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Re: Oldest Emacs alive

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Fabrice Popineau <fabrice.popineau@gmail.com>
> Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2018 11:52:08 +0200
> Cc: Emacs developers <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
> 
> https://crestani.de/xemacs/pdf/thesis-newgc.pdf
> 
> How does it compare to the current GNU EMacs GC ?

Someone started working on upgrading our GC seevral years ago, and did
some initial infrastructure work (that's why we have all those fset_*
and wset_* setters), but the job was never completed.

Volunteers are welcome, as always.