> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard Levitte - VMS Whacker [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Monday, May 01, 2000 12:48 PM
> To: Jordan Henderson
> Cc: 'Richard Levitte - VMS Whacker'; [EMAIL PROTECTED];
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: RE: Any interest in porting emacs 20.x to OpenVMS v7.x
>
>
> From: Jordan Henderson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> I've coming to a decision point now that involves Emacs.
> If I decide
> to dedicate myself to Emacs, I would certainly like a well
> supported,
> newer (20.x) release on OpenVMS, but I'm not sure that
> Emacs is what I
> need.
>
> If you want support, I would actually suggest that there be a group of
> people working on emacs or (ultimately) GNU software for VMS, not one
> single person. I've been the single person (although I've
> had a *lot* of
> help from various people out there) behind the GNU on VMS
> project that I
> started, and francly, I can't see that as a working concept.
> It's simply
> too big for one person in the long run. Looking around,
> groups that I'm
> involved with (like the OpenSSL effort) are proof of that concept.
I really appreciate your experience and advice. I think you are
correct. There is nothing free. Either you pay for support with
money, or you pay with support in your own time. Anyone who expects
"free" software to be supported should expect to participate in some
way in the support, even if it's just active testing and good bug
reports.
>
> The problem is sometimes to be able to get such a group together. I
> would expect that GNU might be enough to get a growing bunch
> around it.
> I would be quite sad if I saw a single person struggle to do that with
> everyone else expecting him or her to do all the work. Been through
> that, and that project is now more or less dead in the water...
>
> I've been using Emacs casually and I'm starting to get the
> hang of it,
> but I'm still not sure of how far Emacs can take me.
>
> Well, I can only tell you what I use and have used emacs for:
>
> 1. development. Building a mode for your particular file type (if
> there isn't one available) is not very hard if you have
> some kind of
> grasp on lisp.
> 2. compilation. That's running make as a subprocess of emacs and
> getting the log in a buffer. The neat thing is that
> emacs can then
> step through all the errors and warnings load the
> offending file and
> place point on the offending line.
> 3. email. I've used a number of packages, like mh-e, gnus,
> rmail, mew,
> vmsmail and some others I do not even remember). I currently
> happily use mew (on Unix) and vmsmail (on VMS) as
> readers, and the
> usual built-in stuff plus a couple of hooks (that hack the mail
> headers and signature for me :-)) for sending.
> 4. news. Gnus, there's no question :-)
> 5. shell buffer. It's absolutely great to get shell output in a
> buffer, especially if you want to be able to scroll
> back, say, 2000
> lines...
> 6. irc client. That was along time ago. I don't remember
> the names of
> the irc modes I used, but I think one was ZenIRC.
> 7. online conference (lyskom) client.
>
> But really, the reason I keep on using emacs is that it was the first
> editor that I really used (or actually, the swedish variant
> called AMIS),
> and I've definitely got comfortable with it. I've never
> gotten around to
> learn vi, edt or eve to the same level, although I've tinkered around
> with all of them (and learned to thoroughly hate and then
> forgive vi, but
> that's a whole other story :-)).
>
> I guess that when you get down to it, what you feel most
> comfortable with
> should be the choice you make. If you think that emacs is worth the
> learning curve, go for it with all your heart. If you feel
> strongly for
> using vi or vi-like stuff, go for that with all your heart.
>
I'm quite comfortable with vi. I do miss keyboard macros (learn in
TPU). VILE has these.
I'm afraid that vi is something of a trap. It's quite comfortable
to do easy things easily with it, but there's little chance for
advancement to harder things.
I fell in love with LISP back in school, so that's another
attraction to Emacs.
Seeing as Mr. Johnson is saying that there's an updated Emacs for
OpenVMS that may be available this summer (and that I'm quite
willing to live with the caveats of Alpha-only, supported initially
on OVMS 7.2, etc.), I'm leaning more and more toward climbing that
learning curve. This was my biggest problem with Emacs. On my
primary system (OpenVMS), I would have the option of using an old
version on which many newer add-ons would not work, or porting newer
Emacs to OpenVMS myself.
> I can't say anything about VILE at all, since I haven't even
> seen it...
>
> HTH, HAND.
Thanks, it helps a lot.
>
> --
> R Levitte, Levitte Programming; Spannv. 38, I; S-168 35
> Bromma; SWEDEN
> Tel: +46-8-26 52 47; Cell: +46-708-26 53 44; Fax: +46-708-26 53 88
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