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APPLE II DEVELOPMENT FORUM CONFERENCE LOG
November 29, 1988  10:00 pm Eastern
Topic: EMACS and other stuff
Forum Leader: James Luther (AFL Jim)


AFL Jim    Welcome to the Apple II Development Forum. Tonight, we'll be
           following protocol
AFL Jim    during the meeting, so listen up!
JSchober   (protocol?! ACK! <=== Bill the Cat protocol...) 
AFL Jim    If you have a question, type a question mark and send it so we'll
           know you're
AFL Jim    waiting.
AFL Jim    If you have a comment, use an exclamation point instead. GaryJ
           will be keeping
AFL Jim    the queue so we'll know who's up next.
AFL Jim    Tonight, our topic is programming environments, so I've asked
           Morgan Davis to
AFL Jim    stop in and help answer questions about the EMACS editor which he
           has uploaded
AFL Jim    into the forum library. Want to start us off with a little
           overview of EMACS,
AFL Jim    Morgan?
MDavis     Wow.  How much time do we have?
AFL Jim    As much as you want ;)
MDavis     MicroEMACS is a text editor for the Apple IIGS's APW or ORCA
           shell
MDavis     environments.  It is the epitome of a programmer's source code
MDavis     and text editor.
MDavis     Some of its features:
MDavis     Macros.
MDavis     Multiple windows.
MDavis     Split window.
MDavis     Ability to shell out (that is, do shell commands while editing)
MDavis     Ability to pipe shell output into a text buffer.
MDavis     Commands are completely mappable (more on this) to keystrokes
           that
MDavis     the user wants, that includes all control keys, function
           (open-apple
MDavis     type) keys, or a mixtures of both.
MDavis     Ability to execute a file that contains editor commands for
           really
MDavis     hairy kinds of text processing where a macro just won't do.
MDavis     Word wrap.
MDavis     Overstrike.
MDavis     Pascal and C modes with auto indention, matching bracket and
           parenthesis
AFL Jim    (getting the idea that this does lots :)
MDavis     blinking (indispensable, those two).
MDavis     This is just the stuff off the top of my head.  I would say that
MDavis     I've only listed about 15% of its abilities.
Dave Lyons !
AFA Gary J Q = Dave
AFL Jim    ?
MDavis     ga Dave
AFA Gary J Q = (Dave), Jim
Dave Lyons I downloaded the source the other day; do I _really_ need 2.25
           megs to compile
Dave Lyons it?  -- And where do I download the execuatble version (haven't
           looked)? ga
MDavis     I have 1.75 mb in my machine, 768K as a ram disk and I can compile
           and
AFA Kathy  !
MDavis     link it just fine.
AFL Jim    The executable version is in the Applications and Utilities
           category of the
AFL Jim    Library.
MDavis     The object code is "MicroEMACS Text Editor" in the library.
MDavis     Make sure to get the manual, too.
Matt DTS   (It locked up on me and I had to reboot!)
MDavis     ga
AFA Gary J Q = Dave (Kathy), Jim
AFL Jim    Kathy, GA
Dave Lyons (I'm done)
AFA Kathy  Just wanted to say sounds like a very impressive program,
AFA Kathy  how much memory then does it need when it's running?
AFA Kathy  (Does more than our mainframe editor does and IT requires 5 MEG to
           run!!!)
AFA Kathy  (Well, 4 meg anyway... :)  )
MDavis     The program is 250 blocks in size.  So I'd guess about 200K would
           work
AFA Kathy  GA
MDavis     for most editing jobs.
MDavis     BTW -- MicroEMACS is the PC version of the UNIX EMACS program with
           some
AFA Kathy  And the max text size?  (Sorry I guess that's a question.)  DONE
AFL Jim    Is that a compacted file Morgan?
MDavis     extra enhancements.
JSchober   !
MDavis     No limit on file sizes ('cept for the amount of RAM you have).
MDavis     250 blocks, compacted.  It's a C program.
AFA Gary J Q = (Joe), Jim
MDavis     I will recompile it under ORCA/C when I get it.
AFL Jim    Joe, GA with your comment.
AFL Jim    -?
JSchober   Is it Freeware, Shareware, ....  ? 
AFA Gary J Q = (Joe)
MDavis     It is a public domain project which spans multiple computers, not
           just
MDavis     the IIGS.
JSchober   Hmmm... PD. Alright, sounds good. Thanks...   :)
JSchober   (GA)
MDavis     Except for the Apple world, EMACS is pretty big everywhere else.
AFL Jim    My only complaint with it is the load time involved.
MDavis     Another feature:
MDavis     It handles multiple width tabs and can use spaces for tabs, or
           real tabs.
JSchober   <Jim... does it stay resident after it's loaded once?>
AFL Jim    (real tab = control-I)
AFL Jim    It'll detab files, too.
MDavis     Joe, not this version.  We are testing it, but it keeps blowing up
           under
MDavis     APW 1.0.
JSchober   Alrighty... for a 250 block file, staying in memory is practically
           a must...
JSchober   <sigh>
MDavis     Yes, it can detab and entab lines.  Pretty keen.
MDavis     Yup.
MDavis     We think it's a bug in APW since the program is 250 blocks in
           size.
Dave Lyons !
AFA Gary J Q = Dave
JSchober   Will it work with ORCA shell?
JSchober   <sorry, Dave...>
MDavis     I haven't tested it, but I think it does.
AFA Parik  !
Dave Lyons I was playing with a short utility written in C...tried to mark it
           Restartable
Dave Lyons and it promptly blew up in my face, so I gave it up (temporarily,
           at least).
AFA Gary J Q = (Dave, Parik)
Dave Lyons [That's ok, Joe]  Is there anything about the C library that
           should cause
MDavis     Yeah.  I think it is just something to do with the APW shell or C
           compiler.
Dave Lyons problems with restartability? ga
MDavis     Could be, Dave.  I'm not worrying about it much as I think ORCA/C
           will
MDavis     just blow APW C away.
MDavis     I'll bet the editor can get down to 200 blocks (maybe less) and
           run faster --.
Gy813      ?
AFL Jim    Parik, GA with your comment
MDavis     which isn't a big deal because it run rings around the APW text
           editor as it
AFA Parik  Works fine under the Orca shell, got it up right now.  The only
           thing that I
AFA Gary J Q = (Parik), Gy813
MDavis     is (all the screen I/O is direct assembly, no tool calls).
AFA Parik  need to get used to is the scrolling, it scrolls "uniquely".  :)
AFA Parik  ga
MDavis     Learning to use EMACS is like pushing a sewing needle through your
           ear drum.
MDavis     But once you discover all of its power and abilities you won't use
           anything
AFA Parik  :)
Dave Lyons :)
MDavis     else.  The learning curve is steep though.  Well worth it,
           however.
AFA Gary J Q = Gy813
AFL Jim    Go ahead with your question, Gy813
Gy813      since we mentioned the subject of APW..is assemble the only
           language
MDavis     I liken it to learning to fly the space shuttle as opposed to a
           paper airplane.
Gy813      avalable for partial compiles?
JSchober   hehehehe...
AFL Jim    !
Dave Lyons !
AFA Gary J Q = Gy813 (Jim, Dave)
MDavis     Gy813.  That is not relevant to this discussion.  Please log off
           now.
AFA Gary J GA Jim
MDavis     NO!  Just kidding!  :-)
AFL Jim    Nope, you can do partial compiles with ORCA/Pascal too.
Gy813      and partials in orca/c ??
AFL Jim    Compile just a specific function or procedure although I think
           they have to be
AFL Jim    a function or procedure at the 1st level (not nested).
AFL Jim    ORCA/C isn't available yet, so I can't comment on it.
AFL Jim    GA Dave
AFA Gary J Q = Gy813 (Dave)
Dave Lyons (I didn't know ORCA/Pascal supported that...hmmm.)  APW C doesn't,
           but you can
Dave Lyons always split your program into separate modules with separte
           object files, so
Dave Lyons it isn't really critical.  ga
MDavis     As you probably should do with most large applications.
AFL Jim    You use a command line something like:
AFL Jim    compile myprogram names=(myprocedure)
AFL Jim    where you only want to recompile myprocedure in myprogram.
Gy813      in C with the APW ??
AFL Jim    I don't think TML Pascal supports the "names" option...
AFL Jim    in ORCA/Pascal, Gy813
Gy813      ok thanks :)
AFA Kathy  afk
AFL Jim    Morgan, back to EMACS... How do I change the keystrokes needed to
           cause things
AFL Jim    to happen.
AFL Jim    ?
AFA Gary J Q = Jim
AFL Jim    (the key bindings)
MDavis     Use the "bind-to-key" function.
MDavis     This can be done on the fly in the program, or in your
           "emacs.rc"
MDavis     file which contains your default settings, keys, macros,
           variables, etc.
AFL Jim    ahhh... I wondered what emacs.rc was for. Thanks.
Dave Lyons !
AFL Jim    GA Dave
AFA Gary J Q = (Dave)
Dave Lyons I've always wondered this:  what does "rc" stand for?  ga
Dave Lyons (And don't say Royal Crown :)
AFA Gary J :)
MDavis     Me, too.  I think it is short for "ResourCe"?
AFL Jim    radio controlled
AFA Kathy  Return Code of course!  LOL!
MDavis     It's used everywhere: .cshrc, .muchrc, .mailrc, .newsrc, etc.
AFA Gary J (I thought it was Random Code)
Dave Lyons M, yup, those are the places that make me wonder about it (never
           seen 'much'
AFL Jack   Rotten Code.....  :)
Dave Lyons tho).
MDavis     I'll ask bblue.
Dave Lyons As long as I've got the floor (?), does MicroEMACS use shell
           variables at all?
AFA Gary J Q = Dave
MDavis     In what capacity, Dave?
MDavis     I don't think it does.  But why would you need it to?
Dave Lyons Ummm...I guess I mean does it take default settings from shell
           variables if
Dave Lyons they are there, or anything else.  I don't know how useful it
           would be given
Dave Lyons emacs.rc, of course.  Related ? is can you use it as a standalone
           application
Dave Lyons if you change the filtype to S16?
MDavis     I think so.  It makes no shell calls unless you use the ^X! (shell
           out)
MDavis     command.
Dave Lyons Good.  ga
AFL Jim    !
AFA Gary J Q = (Jim)
MDavis     Other feature:
AFL Jim    Morgan, couldn't that be disabled by checking the shell ID before
           allowing a
AFL Jim    shell call?
MDavis     It has paragraph fill to make your text fill out to margins
           perfectly.
Dave Lyons !
MDavis     It might already do that, Jim.
Dave Lyons Jim, would you _want_ it to check the shell ID first?  Which
           shells would it
MDavis     I only use it from the shell.  Never tried it from,say, the
           Finder.
Dave Lyons support, or would you want it to just check for an error code?
AFL Jim    probably have it check for no shell.
Dave Lyons Yeah, I suppose that's simple enough: XY=$00000000 on entry if no
           shell.
MDavis     THat's what the C library START code does, I think.
AFL Jim    How many windows does it let you have open, Morgan?
MDavis     Disables all the argv[] ability.
AFA Gary J Q = Jim
MDavis     I haven't topped it off to find out.  I think it's just based on
           RAM.
JSchober   !
AFL Jim    GA Joe
AFA Gary J Q = Jim (Joe)
JSchober   Those MouseText windows or something along those lines?
MDavis     By windows I mean "screen areas".  It's all in text, but no weird
           borders and
MDavis     stuff to take away editing space.
JSchober   Ah... good! :) Thanks...
MDavis     You get a status bar at the bottom of each window.  So that is
           your
MDavis     divider.
MDavis     Other features:
MDavis     Cut, copy, paste, delete, character transposition, begin/end of:
MDavis     lines, paragraphs, screens, words, file, etc.
JSchober   <how 'bout a spelling checker with Pascal and C reserved words??
           ;) >
MDavis     Search.  Search/replace.  Search/replace with Y/N query.
Dave Lyons !
AFA Gary J :)
AFL Jim    GA Dave
AFA Gary J Q = (Dave)
MDavis     Incremental search (forward and backward)
Dave Lyons Does the cut/copy/paste support the GS scrap manager?  ga
MDavis     (search while you type in the string)
MDavis     Nope.  It's the built-in EMACS standard "kill/yank" buffer.
MDavis     This isn't a IIGS application, after all.
Dave Lyons Wanna put scrap manager support in?  Maybe we could start a trend
           of supporting
MDavis     It just runs on a IIGS.
MDavis     That's why the source is PD!
Dave Lyons stuff that GS stuff is supposed to support.  It's an application
           running on the
Dave Lyons GS...that makes it a GS application if you ask me :)
MDavis     On "another major information service" a group of programmers are
           hacking it.
AFA Parik  xib?  :)
JSchober   (heh)
AFL Jim    What's the Mac version look like, Morgan?
MDavis     Right, kiraP.
AFA Parik  :)
MDavis     We're fixing it and making it better.  The scrap manager idea
           hasn't been
AFL Jim    ie: how'd they simulate the text screen :)
MDavis     brought up until now.  It is something to add.  (yet more #ifdef
           IIGS's)
MDavis     I haven't seen it, Jim.
AFL Jim    I just wondered - the docs mentioned a Mac version with mouse
           control and menus
AFA Gary J !
AFL Jim    GA Gary
AFA Gary J I noticed this program evolved from quite a few years ago...what
           other computer
AFA Gary J systems has this program run on? 
MDavis     C-64 had it before the Apple.  Sickening.
JSchober   <shudder>
AFA Gary J Uugh!
MDavis     Amiga, Atari, CP/M machines, PC's
JSchober   Gads... and Apple LAST?? What IS this world coming to?!
MDavis     (The apple has never had a decent C compiler is the reason)
AFA Gary J (That's what I was wondering!)
AFA Parik  Does the nintendo have it?  :)
AFA Gary J LOL!
JSchober   :) Parik...
JSchober   Timex Sinclair?? TI 99/4A?? Err.... VIC-20?? 
AFA Parik  :)
AFA Parik  Hi Andy
AFL Jack   the Nintendo uses a 'd' compiler  ;)
MDavis     Just about any machine that has a good C compiler has it.
JSchober   Hi, Andy...
ShrinkIt   Oh no, I've been ambushed! :)
AFL Jim    Morgan, Thanks for coming and answering all the questions
           tonight.
AFA Parik  ()()()()()
MDavis     It would take about three hours to do MicroEMACS any justice.
JSchober   <what Parik... errr... said... :) >
MDavis     Hopefully you power-programmers are interested enough to check it
           out now.
JSchober   Yup; in fact, I think I'll d/l it tonight.... :) Really sounds
           nice...
AFL Jim    I suggest that all of you with IIGSs download the Docs and check
           what it can do
Dave Lyons Will it be faster to download the executable or compile the
           source? :)
AFA Parik  GET THE DOCS!  You can't quit the program without it.  :)
MDavis     Make sure you get the manual!  Best PD manual I've ever seen!
AFA Gary J :)
MDavis     GMTA, Parik.
Dave Lyons You can if you already use EMACS on a mainframe, Parik :)
AFL Jim    I was able to download EMACS and the docs in less than 1/2 hour at
           2400 bps.
AFA Parik  :P Dave
JSchober   Really?? Not bad, Jim...
MDavis     Downloading will be faster I think.
MDavis     Could be a close race.
MDavis     There are about 30-some C source files in it.
AFA Gary J (There is no Open-Apple key on a mainframe, I guess  :)
JSchober   Then you folks'll excuse me... I'll go take a look at this
           bugger!! Thanks for
JSchober   the chat, folks....   :)
MDavis     OH!
AFA Parik  Bye Joe!  Have a lotta fun D/Ling it!  :) 
Dave Lyons Okay, will download it.  Gotta read Pride and Prejudice anyway....
           :)
JSchober   (oh, yeah, joy...) Night!
MDavis     uEMACS uses the ESC key as a meta prefix.
AFA Parik  How long did you guys spend converting this program anyways?  Must
           have been  
AFA Parik  a great time!  :)
MDavis     The function key ability was created for the PC's and similar
           computers with
MDavis     FN keys.
MDavis     Paul Elseth did most of the conversion.  Based on the dates on
           the
MDavis     files it looks like he spent about three months hacking away on
           his
MDavis     own before putting the source on BIX for the rest of us to oogle
           over.
ShrinkIt   I got it, but didn't notice... will it use an extended keyboard's
           FN keys?
AFA Parik  Wow!  Big kudos to Paul...
Dave Lyons I was looking at the keyboard-reading source briefly...doesn't
           look like it
MDavis     Dunno, Andy.
Dave Lyons treats "keypad" keys specially, so I suspect it _doesn't_
           recognize the
MDavis     The source is there for all the keyboard and screen stuff.  Paul
           and
Dave Lyons extended keyboard's function keys as anything other than lowercase
           letters.
MDavis     I went round-and-round on making it as fast as possible.
MDavis     We check for control key (modifiers flag) for certain commands so
           that
AFA Parik  It's really fast Morgan!  Text output is great!  
MDavis     Control-J is a different key than the down arrow.
Dave Lyons (The Prime I use EMACS on filters out Ctrl-J before EMACS can even
           see it...
Dave Lyons brilliant, eh?)
ShrinkIt   (maybe "next version?" :)  It's very good... I like the cut&paste
           between files
MDavis     Here's a tip for you guys just getting into EMACS (or about to):
ShrinkIt   (since orca's doesn't do that... )
AFA Parik  ^X^C quits.  :)
MDavis     The program is TOO LOGICAL.  I mean, it is so logical that it
           seems
MDavis     to be hard to learn.  For example, to move around the screen,
           the
AFA Parik  Andy, are you sure?  I can ^X a block, exit, return, and
           repaste.
MDavis     standard movement keys are ^F (forward), ^B (backward), ^P
           (previous),
MDavis     and ^N (next).  Fortunately, we mapped the IIGS's arrows to
           these
MDavis     functions so that it is more logical for *US* to use.  But that
           is
AFA Gary J (good!)
MDavis     just an example of how well thought out the commands are. They
           are
MDavis     easy to remember if you FORGET about all the BAD editors that
           have
MDavis     ruined logical thinking.
AFA Parik  hehe
MDavis     Too true.
Dave Lyons And, for ex, putting an ESC in front of one of those makes it move
           1 word
Dave Lyons instead of one character.  Things fit together nicely.
ShrinkIt   (like OA-L for a forward search maybe?  :)
MDavis     Yup.  And OA-RIGHT-ARROW does the same as ESC-F(forward)
Dave Lyons good
AFA Gary J Ahh..now that's logical.
MDavis     You can also count-prefix commands.  eg:
MDavis     ESC-255 DELETE.... that will do 255 deletes.
MDavis     The program does everything.
Dave Lyons Except printing, right?
MDavis     Yeah.  And it shouldn't concern itself with printing.
MDavis     We need to port troff or nroff to the IIGS now.
Dave Lyons (So it does everything it _should_. :)
MDavis     Right.
ShrinkIt   (yeah, right... hahahahaha)
MDavis     You can shell out and print from APW/ORCA, of course.
MDavis     While still in the editor.
Dave Lyons Geez, nroff slows down Vaxes....
AFA Gary J (It doesn't do everything Nifty List does...  :)
ShrinkIt   (and suns)
AFA Parik  :) Gary
Dave Lyons Sorry, that should be Vaxen.
MDavis     We need a good text-formatting/printing program.
Dave Lyons (Yeah, you can go into Nifty List and print an ASCII dump of your
           file.... :)
MDavis     Even a "man" would be good for most purposes.
AFL Jim    Hey Fuzzzz... you're lurking too much tonight.
Dave Lyons Morgan, that reminds me...Davex has a really _crude_ text
           formatter, fp, that
Dave Lyons I use to print ALPE notes that I've Saved As, and I noticed that
           there are
Dave Lyons backspaces in those saved notes after brackets (don't remember
           which kind); can
Dave Lyons anybody tell me why those are there?
AFA Parik  Hi SGQUick!
AFL Jim    Only BillP knows for sure, Dave.
MDavis     THey have ^W and ^V codes in log files too.
SGQuick    Hi everyone.
AFA Gary J I'd like to know too, Dave.  I've noticed them too.
MDavis     Weird.
Dave Lyons Yeah...noticed those, too.
AFA Parik  "Custom software tricks"   Yup.  ;) 
MDavis     Gosh -- incompatible with APPLEWORKS!  FOR SHAME!!!
Dave Lyons I must admit I've never used the print-file option in Work
           Offline...does it do
Dave Lyons anything interesting with those codes?
AFL Jim    nope
AFA Gary J hehe
MDavis     Gotta go back and code now, guys.
AFA Gary J Thanks, Morgan!
AFL Jim    OK, Morgan... thanks again.
AFA Parik  bye Morgan!  Thanks for enlightening!  
MDavis     Send me your uEMACS questions in e-mail if you want.
MDavis     See ya.
ShrinkIt   gnight
AFL Jim    or post'm
Dave Lyons Bye, Morgan.
AFL Jim    :)
Dave Lyons (Is there already a uEMACS folder?)
AFA Gary J We need an EMACS folder.