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Article #4722Re: Genesis of GNU Emacs
From: l... Lum Johnson
Date: Tue, 25 Sep 1990 07:31
Date: Tue, 25 Sep 1990 07:31
57 lines
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3248 bytes
In article <cazh7xr0B...@transarc.com> Pat_B...@TRANSARC.COM writes: > >Several days ago, I posted a note saying that GNU Emacs was not based >on James Gosling's Unix Emacs. Actually, it's an interesting philosophical question, revolving around how one defines "based". In a more real sense, GNU Emacs is "based" on ITS Emacs, which was implemented on the Incompatible Timesharing System circa 1971, and TWENEX Emacs, a port to Digital's then-new hack of BBN's TENEX system which would become TOPS-20. These and a couple dozen other flavours of Emacs are described in a 1975 technical report from MIT - I can probably dig up a copy if anyone is interested. By the way, note that Emacs started out in life running under more than one operating system, and hiding the details of the differences of the semantics of their filesystems was an early accomplishment. Emacs has had long practice at being a "virtual operating system". ;ITS TECO and EMACS should serve as a lesson to all ;of what can be achieved when programmers' creativity is not crushed ;by administrators whose main concern is stifling humor, ;stamping out all possibility of enthusiasm, and forbidding ;everything that isn't compulsory. ;They were produced in a humane anarchy where one man designs, ;implements, and then documents the feature that inspires him. ;They were produced by people who could laugh enough to ;name many years of effort the Incompatible Timesharing System. ;Of course, the whole story is imaginary. Working conditions ;which do not crush the spirit can't be practical. ;You can't run a team that way if you expect to meet the deadline. ;TECO doesn't really exist; you were only dreaming it. ;ITS TECO was built by RMS on the work of others ;at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab ;(not to be confused with the Laboratory for Computer Science). ;It was converted to run on Twenex by MMCM at SRI. ;TECO is available to those who like the way it is, ;on a basis of communal co-operation: ;you are welcome to make improvements, but only if you consult ;with the other user sites, and send your changes ;to MIT to be merged in and distributed to everyone. ;You owe your improvements to us in return for what you see here. ;If anyone asks you for a copy, make sure he gets in touch with ;the MIT AI Lab so he can get the latest stuff. [From TECO.MID, the source for ITS TECO. RMS = Richard M Stallman and MMCM = Mike McMahon.] Lum -- -- Lum Johnson l...@cis.ohio-state.edu l...@osu-20.ircc.ohio-state.edu "You got it kid -- the large print giveth and the small print taketh away." -------
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Path: mbox-mo1.pugleaf.net!gmdzi!unido!mcsun!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!giza.cis.ohio-state.edu!lum From: l...@giza.cis.ohio-state.edu (Lum Johnson) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Genesis of GNU Emacs Message-ID: <83976@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Date: 25 Sep 90 07:31:17 GMT References: <cazh7xr0Bwwe4bCkoY@transarc.com> Sender: ne...@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Organization: The Ohio State University, IRCC/CIS Joint Computing Laboratory Lines: 57 Posted: Tue Sep 25 08:31:17 1990 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit