Re: Daniel Weinreb Died ((1959 ~ 2012) Lisp Programer)

[Cortez <relativeflux@hotmail.co.uk>]

On Oct 27, 9:24 pm, gnuist...@hotmail.com wrote:
> On Sep 8, 3:25 am, Xah Lee <xah...@gmail.com> wrote:
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> > DanielWeinrebDied ((1959 ~ 2012) Lisp Programer)http://ergoemacs.org/misc/Daniel_Weinreb_died.html
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> > plain text version follows
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> > ------------------------------
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> > DanielWeinrebdied today. Cancer. Aged 53. (≈1959 ~ 2012-09-07).
> > Obituary athttp://www.legacy.com/obituaries/bostonglobe/obituary.aspx?page=lifes...
>
> > Danielfrequently use comp.lang.lisp. Since about 2007, i became
> > acquainted with him, because he responded to some of my lisp
> > criticisms. Subsequently i learned of his status in the lisp
> > community. Later have exchanged a couple email with him. I didn't know
> > he had cancer. Don't think he ever blogged about his illness.
>
> > DanielWeinrebused Emacs before Richard Stallman, and is a co-founder
> > of Symbolics, a lisp company during 1980s.
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> > He told me about how emacs keybinding started.
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> >     Source groups.google.com.
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> >     From:DanielWeinreb〔d...@alum.mit.edu〕
> >     User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 (Windows/20080421)
> >     Newsgroups: comp.emacs,comp.lang.lisp
> >     Subject: Re: effective emacs
>
> >     xah...@gmail.com wrote:
> >     │ Effective Emacs
> >     │
> >     │ (Long term emacs productivity tips.)
> >     │
> >     │ Xah Lee, 2008-05-29
> >     │
> >     │ I have used emacs daily since 1998. Typically, i spent several
> > hours
> >     │ inside emacs, everyday, for the past 10 years.
>
> >     Same for me, except the year is 1977.  Nobody has been using Emacs
> >     longer than I have (I was one of the original beta-testers.  I
> > refer
> >     here to the original Emacs, written in ITS TECO for the DEC 10.)
>
> >     │ Emacs's default cursor moving shortcuts are “Ctrl+f”, “Ctrl+b”,
> > “Ctrl
> >     │ +n”, “Ctrl+p”. The keys f, b, n, p are scattered around the
> > keyboard
> >     │ and are not under the home row.
>
> >     That's true.  At the time Guy Steele put together the Emacs
> > default
> >     key mappings, many people in the target user community (about 20
> >     people at MIT!) were already using these key bindings.  It would
> >     have been hard to get the new Emacs bindings accepted by the
> >     community if they differed for such basic commands.  As you point
> >     out, anyone using Emacs can very easily change this based on
> >     their own ergonomic preferences.
>
> >     │ GOOD
> >     │ Microsoft Natural Multimedia keyboard
>
> >     Let me put in a quick plug for my own favorite keyboard, which
> >     I am using right now: the Unicomp Customizer:
>
> >    http://pckeyboards.stores.yahoo.net/customizer.html
>
> >     I like the feel of the keys very much.  I agree with you
> >     that it's important, and worth some effort, for everyone
> >     to find a keyboard that they feel most comfortable with.
>
> >     │ Problem and Why Emacs's Keyboard Shortcuts Are Painful.
>
> >     I generally make few customizations to the key bindings, so
> >     that when I work with another programmer, I can turn the
> >     keyboard over to them and not cause confusion.
>
> >     │ Steve advices users to “Lose the UI”.
>
> >     I rarely use the menu bar.  On the other hand, I was raised on an
> >     Emacs that didn't have a menu bar, so I could be atypical.  Using
> >     the mouse to set point or set the region is great, though, and I
> >     use that a lot.
>
> >     Here's another piece of historical trivia.  The Emacs keyboard
> >     macro feature was inspired by a similar feature in the Stanford
> >     DRAW system, an electrical CAD system widely-used by the AI lab
> >     hardware hackers at the time.  It was very powerful.  But if you
> >     made a mistake, it could really destroy your design, and so it
> >     was a good idea to save to disk before running it.  We had a
> > saying
> >     for what happened if you forgot to save: "A moment of convenience,
> >     a lifetime of regret."  This predates the widespread use of "Undo"
> >     functionality, surely one of the best ideas for user interfaces
> >     ever invented.
>
> >     -- Dan
>
> > Danielis a co-founder of the lisp company Symbolics. Sometimes, you
> > can see he speaks out on lisp history. Here's one: 〔Rebuttal to
> > Stallman's Story About The Formation of Symbolics and LMI 2007-11-11
> > ByDanielWeinreb. @ danweinreb.org (local copy
> > Daniel_Weinreb_rebuttal_to_stallmans_story.txt)〕
>
> > Danielalso wrote a version of emacs. EINE (EINE Is Not Emacs). Here's
> > quote from Wikipedia:
>
> >     EINE (a recursive acronym standing for “EINE Is Not Emacs”) was
> > the Emacs text editor for Lisp machines. It was developed byDanielWeinreband Mike McMahon in the late 1970s, with a command set the
> > same as the original Emacs written in TECO by Richard Stallman. It
> > would later be developed into ZWEI ( “ZWEI Was Eine Initially”), which
> > itself would eventually become Symbolics' Zmacs (integrated into
> > Symbolics' development for their Lisp machines, Genera). It was the
> > second Emacs written, and the first to be written in Lisp.
>
> > (for some emacs history, see: GNU Emacs and XEmacs Schism, by Ben
> > Wing.)
>
> > On occasion i criticized lisp's cons,Danielgently nudged me to give
> > detail. See: Programing Language: A Ruby Illustration of Lisp
> > Problems.
>
> > DanielWeinrebhimself have criticized Common Lisp. See: Common Lisp
> > Sucks.
>
> > One of the popular article Dan has written is a comparison of Common
> > Lisp implementations. 〔Common Lisp Implementations: A Survey
> > 2007-12-20 ByDanielWeinreb. @ Source common-lisp.net〕
>
> > When he announced that on comp.lang.lisp, i recommended the page be
> > broken to sub-pages, and other formatting issues. See: Monolithic Web
> > Pages. He didn't take it to heart. (and i regret my tone in the
> > criticism)
>
> > DanielWeinrebis also mentioned in the acknowledgement section in The
> > UNIX-HATERS Handbook. (see the PDF file at The Unix Pestilence.)
>
> > Dan's blog is at.http://danweinreb.org/blog/Lastentry is just 2
> > days ago, where he talks about learning French.
>
> > I feel sad that Dan is gone.
>
> >  Xah
>
> Its very sad to hear that he has passed away.
>
> Perhaps, the best we can do to keep his legacy is to make sure all of
> the surviving works of this student of lisp are put online and made
> available to the coming generations.

He wasn't just a student of Lisp, he helped create CL.

> Here are his publications that I cant find anywhere on the internet.
> Xah, it seems that you might have a copy as you were a close friend
> and found out about his passing before any of us.

I don't think Xah Lee knew him personally.

> What kind of cancer was he suffering from?

Leukaemia, I believe.

> Lisp Machine Zwei
> *Weinreb, Daniel L. & Moon, David (January 1979) The Lisp Machine
> Manual.

http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/mit/cadr/chinual_3rdEd_Mar81.pdf

Also plenty more stuff under http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/mit/cadr