From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Thomas Lord Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: some emacs history Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2010 13:58:34 -0700 Message-ID: <1272661114.6161.22.camel@dell-desktop.example.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1272661132 7260 80.91.229.12 (30 Apr 2010 20:58:52 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2010 20:58:52 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: "Nelson H. F. Beebe" Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Fri Apr 30 22:58:49 2010 connect(): No such file or directory Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1O7xIN-0003cK-8Q for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Fri, 30 Apr 2010 22:58:47 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:38237 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1O7xIM-0005U8-QC for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Fri, 30 Apr 2010 16:58:46 -0400 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1O7xIH-0005TS-UV for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 30 Apr 2010 16:58:41 -0400 Original-Received: from [140.186.70.92] (port=34313 helo=eggs.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1O7xIG-0005Sf-KF for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 30 Apr 2010 16:58:41 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1O7xIE-0003uI-Pe for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 30 Apr 2010 16:58:40 -0400 Original-Received: from smtp121.iad.emailsrvr.com ([207.97.245.121]:42268) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1O7xIE-0003uC-M2 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 30 Apr 2010 16:58:38 -0400 Original-Received: from relay2.r2.iad.emailsrvr.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by relay2.r2.iad.emailsrvr.com (SMTP Server) with ESMTP id E9A1E44C072; Fri, 30 Apr 2010 16:58:37 -0400 (EDT) Original-Received: by relay2.r2.iad.emailsrvr.com (Authenticated sender: lord-AT-emf.net) with ESMTPSA id F282E44C0DA; Fri, 30 Apr 2010 16:58:36 -0400 (EDT) In-Reply-To: X-Mailer: Evolution 2.22.3.1 X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.4-2.6 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:124368 Archived-At: (An aside: does anyone besides me remember a lisp-based emacs that was available in 1983 or so called "CGI Emacs" - that ran on unix workstations? I am pretty sure that this was not Gosling / Unipress Emacs and that it used a real lisp, not mock-lisp. I see no trace of it in web searches but I'm sure I didn't imagine using it.) On Thu, 2010-04-29 at 18:39 -0600, Nelson H. F. Beebe wrote: > There is a new paper that has just appeared that documents some early > history of emacs that may be of interest to some of you. The DOI in > the BibTeX entry below leads to a PDF file, but it may require an IEEE > digital library subscription for yourself or your employer: Before I knew of Emacs, the first interactive, visual editor I used was called EDT on a RSTS system to which I had limited access. One day I found a PDP-11 assembly language book in a bookstore, bought that, and tried it out - only to find that the RSTS system administrators would not allow students to use the assembler for fear that they could compromise "security". (This was kind of funny because it was fairly easy to subvert some major aspects of security on RSTS, even without access to the fearsome assembler. It was so easy that students found ways to do so entirely by accident.) Another day, somebody left a Teco manual in the terminal room. Students were allowed to run Teco. That version of Teco had a scope command (I think it was "w"). The scope command would update the screen of a smart terminal (like VT-52 or VT-100) with all recent edits. I think that version used "< ... >" for loops, not "( ... )". Do you know anything about the RSTS version of TECO? Given the manual, for some strange reason, I wrote an EDT emulator in TECO, adding a feature that let users enter a string of TECO commands and bind them to a key on the numeric keypad. I was very excited to have "invented" an editor for which users could write new commands. (GNU Emacs was first released 1-2 years later and I first learned *an* emacs (a proprietary emacs, not Gosling's) maybe 6-9 months after my TECO hack). My hack looked enough like the real EDT that I quietly installed it in the public user account that all students shared. So, whenever someone ran "edt" - they would get this TECO version. It took a couple of days before anyone noticed (and I didn't get in all that much trouble - just told not to do that again). TECO was a blast. Deep in a box, somewhere, I still have a listing of the line noise that was my EDT emulator. The scope command was magic, as far I was concerned back then. I could see how people could do a full-screen editor on one of those new-fangled micro-computers with their memory-mapped character displays but the hair of sending all those VT-XX(X) escape sequences was pretty amazing. -t