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Aucbvax.5814 fa.info-vax utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!info-vax Sat Jan 16 15:02:29 1982 pandora's box >From GZ@MIT-MC Sat Jan 16 14:39:51 1982 As for EMACS -- well, the only decent EMACS-like editor is Gosling EMACS on UNIX. It is true that this has been transported to Eunice, but several highly important features are missing. The most important is the ability to split the screen into two windows, and type commands directly to a OS command language interpreter (i.e., SHELL) and have them executed. This includes the ability to lift input and output out of the "shell window" and stick it into some other editing buffer, and vice versa.

I don't know where you got the idea that you can't do this in the VMS version. We are running very standard VMS, with a standard VMS-hacked distribution (from Kashtan) of Gosling's Emacs. It is true you don't type stuff directly at the OS command language interpreter -- you type stuff at emacs, using full emacs editing facilities. That's half of the whole point. After you send it to the OS, it puts the output in a buffer for you, where you can do what you want with it, editing it, copying to another window, or whatever. You can even run the whole thing at interrupt level, with mlisp routines you provide getting called whenever the OS wants input or has output. In addition, you can have several subprocesses running simultaniously, doing several compilations at the same time, say. Stuff like splitting windows and other details of the user interface are easily written in Mlisp. In general, while I could list many complaints about the VAX Emacs, very few of them would be about the sub-process handling facilities. I find them to be one of the most satisfying and least amateurish parts of the emacs. In fact, nowadays, I tend to go into emacs right after logging in, and hardly ever get out, instead doing all my work, compilations, program testing, whatever, from inside emacs.

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