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Aucb.109 fa.editor-p utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!C70:editor-p Thu Dec 3 17:14:14 1981 Orthogonal command structures >From Admin.JQJ@SU-SCORE Thu Dec 3 16:56:22 1981 From: Richard M. Stallman <RMS AT MIT-AI>

It is a mistake to regard any particular command language as inherent in the idea of EMACS. I disagree as a matter of sociology rather than necessity of design. The defining characteristic of EMACS is that it is user-extensible. I claim that one result of that flexibility is that any actually used command set will be one that ``just growed'' based on ``mutual sharing'' , and was shaped by many people's needs and interests (Stallman, 1981). Such a community or evolutionary approach to an editor seems very likely to result in a command set that is NOT regular. For hackers and frequent users of an editor, current research seems pretty clear that a keystroke-minimization approach is optimal for editor design (Card, Moran, & Newell, 1980a, Card, Moran, & Newell, 1980b, Rumelhart & Norman, 1981); EMACS is well suited to such an approach because the individual user can apply what amounts to interactive data compression, defining new commands so as to minimize his/her typing. But such typing minimization plays hob with a regular command set. A cross-product command set is unlikely to survive Huffman coding, and hence is unlikely in an Emacs-style editor.

From: Ken Harrenstien <KLH AT MIT-AI>

Have you ever seen NLS (now AUGMENT)? This is a true cross-product command language system that has been around for quite a while. I have used it and EMACS for several years, and while the former is easier to learn (and easier to remember obscure commands for), the latter is easier to use. This problem might in part be due to the age of NLS (Roberts, 1979); editor technology has in fact improved over the years. A fairer comparison would be with a recently designed cross-product system such as ZED (Pratt, 1980), Vaughan Pratt's orthogonal command display editor (aka DOC), or DEC's EDT (DEC EDT, 1980).

There has been quite a bit of research on command languages recently. For example, some folks at Bell Labs (if you're reading this, I'd like to see your work or at least get a citation) have been studying natural names for typical editor commands. They find, as one might expect, that ``scratch`` (IBM), ``wipe``, ``delete`` (Tops-20), ``yank'' (DG teco), et alia are all very obscure and counterintuitive names for eliminating a file; perhaps a better choice of command names will yield orthogonal editors which are preferable to NLS?

From: Jan Walker <JWALKER@BBNA>

Principle I. Easy things should be easy to do. It is nice but not as necessary for complex things to be easy to do. The problem with this rule is that it isn't clear what ``easy things'' are. Is deleting to end of the paragraph (``D1EPAR'' in EDT, or ``C-@<ALT>]C-w'' in default Emacs) an easy or a hard thing? Should it be easy to type? For that matter, is it easier to type in EDT or in Emacs? It is certainly easier to remember in EDT!

REFERENCES

Card, S. K., Moran, T. P. & Newell, A. Computer text editing: An information- processing analysis of a routine cognitive skill. Cognitive Psychology, 1980, 12(1), 32-74.

Card, S. K., Moran, T. P. & Newell, A. The Keystroke Model for User Performance Time with Interactive Systems. Communications of the ACM, July 1980, 23(7), NoPages. Also available as Xerox PARC SSL-79-1.

Digital Equipment Corporation. VAX-11 EDT Editor Reference Manual (EDT V2.0 ed.). Maynard, MA: Author, April 1980. DEC Order No. AA-H944A-TE.

Pratt, V. ZED Manual. 1980. Available from the author. Send ARPAnet mail to CSD.PRATT at SU-SCORE.

Roberts, T. Evaluation of Computer Text Editors. Doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, 1979. Also available as Xerox PARC memorandum SSL- 79-9, November 1979.

Rumelhart, D.E. & Norman, D.A. Simulating a Skilled Typist: A study of skilled cognitive-motor performance (Tech. Rep.). University of California, San Diego, 1981.

Stallman, R. M. Emacs Manual for Twenex Users (AI Memo 555). Cambridge, MA: MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, 1981. -------

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