DEar Listmembers: I am really dismayed by the rankor in this list over the value of different text editors for different users. All of the problems came about because of memory proliferation. Yes, that's what I said - memory proliferation! Text editors of any kind are only possible when users have too much memory to waste on unessential tasks. The only way for a user to have "complete" control over the computer is to assure that their only access is through the front panel toggle switches. I remember with fondness my first PDP-8 and PDP-11 computers. They had beautiful colored consoles switches and a paper tape transport to punch and read program tapes. No fancy text editors for us! You could always tell the "newbies" from everyone else, because they carried a little book of op-codes in their shirt pockets (or purse) so they could program the machines. However, the 'real experts' knew op-codes by heart and could toggle-in a program in no time. No one, newbie or expert, could bring the system down for too long. If the system went down , just read in a program tape and off you go. Then, with memory expansions over 16K and hard drives of 256K, people produced those cranky little line-editor programs that allowed them to save programs and develop compilers. Well, you can see what happened, anyone could walk in and program the machine without 'expert' knowledge of the machine op-codes. Worst yet, these newbies didn't even care if they knew op-codes or not. I sure miss my console toggle-swithches. ========= Submitted with the greatest respect for the past and hope for the future, Bill Hudspeth
