🚀 go-pugleaf

r...@squid.rtech.com ("REB - Tennessee Lamb") writes:

}Does the word "xyzzy" have an origin earlier than the Colossal Cave adventure
}game? Where exactly did it come from?

I believe that Will just made it up [much as he made up near everything else
in Adventure].  I can ask him, but I'm really quite sure that it was just
random-letters.

  /Bernie\

In article <51...@bbn.COM> cos...@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) writes:
>r...@squid.rtech.com ("REB - Tennessee Lamb") writes:
>
>}Does the word "xyzzy" have an origin earlier than the Colossal Cave adventure
>}game? Where exactly did it come from?
>
>I believe that Will just made it up [much as he made up near everything else
>in Adventure].  I can ask him, but I'm really quite sure that it was just
>random-letters.

On I-15 between Los Angeles and Las Vegas there is a road with the
name Xyyzzy or something very similar (I fly nowadays and so haven't
seen it in a while) This may be where he got the word but I have no
way of verifying it.


jpo...@ucsd.edu
jpoole@ucsd.bitnet

In article <61...@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> ju...@sdbio2.ucsd.edu (Jude Poole) writes:
>On I-15 between Los Angeles and Las Vegas there is a road with the
>name Xyyzzy or something very similar (I fly nowadays and so haven't
>seen it in a while) This may be where he got the word but I have no
>way of verifying it.

Actually it is Zzyzx Road.  Whatever the hell that is.

							spl (the p stands for
							put a lot of miles on
							the RX-7 between San
							Diego and Vegas...)
-- 
Steve Lamont, sciViGuy	(919) 248-1120		EMail:	s...@ncsc.org
NCSC, Box 12732, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709
"That's People's Commissioner Tirebiter -- and NOBODY'S sweetheart!"
					- F. Scott Firesign

	Nope, sorry -- that's "Zyzzyx Springs Road".  The road leads to
what used to be a resort with hot springs -- the developer figured that
it would be the very last entry in every atlas of the U.S., and he'd get 
a lot of publicity that way -- it didn't work well enough to make the
resort a success, however.

	(I used to live out that way . . .)

	(This is rapidly devolving into
"alt.folklore.computers.and.other.trivia"  :-)


Sam'l Bassett, Sterling Software @ NASA Ames Research Center, 
Moffett Field CA 94035 Work: (415) 694-4792;  Home: (415) 969-2644
sa...@well.sf.ca.us                     sa...@ames.arc.nasa.gov 
<Disclaimer> := 'Sterling doesn't _have_ opinions -- much less NASA!'

In the same vein as all of the posts about TECO, VAX, and PDP....
What does Emacs mean?  


just curious,

nancy

"I love you" is just another word for death.

In article <21...@unix.cis.pitt.edu>, no...@unix.cis.pitt.edu (nancy
nott) writes:
> In the same vein as all of the posts about TECO, VAX, and PDP....
> What does Emacs mean?  

Emacs
Makes
A
Computer
Slow.

Mark Brown   IBM AWD / OSF  | If a train station is where               
       
The Good     mbr...@osf.org |       a train stops,                            
The Bad     uunet!osf!mbrown| What happens at                                 
The Ugly     (617) 621-8981 |       a work station?                           

In article <28...@paperboy.OSF.ORG> mbr...@osf.org (Mark Brown) writes:
>In article <21...@unix.cis.pitt.edu>, no...@unix.cis.pitt.edu (nancy
>nott) writes:
>> In the same vein as all of the posts about TECO, VAX, and PDP....
>> What does Emacs mean?  
>
>Emacs
>Makes
>A
>Computer
>Slow.

Well, that's harsh!  More accurately, Extensible MACro.

My favorites were on the LISP Machine: EINE and ZWEI

	Eine
	Is
	Not
	Emacs
and
	Zwei
	Was
	Emacs (or Eine?)
	Initially

Self-recursive acronyms, plus the series iterates, in German anyway.

In article <21...@unix.cis.pitt.edu>, nott@unix (nancy nott) writes:
| In the same vein as all of the posts about TECO, VAX, and PDP....
| What does Emacs mean?  

>From the file etc/emacs.names in the GNU Emacs distribution:

|| From: harvard!topaz!BLUE!BRAIL@mit-eddie
|| Date: 9 Sep 85 17:25:27 EDT
|| Subject: EMACS -- What does it mean?
|| To: mit-prep!info-gn...@TOPAZ.RUTGERS.EDU
|| 
|| 	EMACS may stand for "Editing MACroS," but some friends of mine
|| suggested some more creative definitions. Here they are. Anyone have
|| any additions?
|| 
|| --------
|| 
|| Even a
|| Master of
|| Arts
|| Comes 
|| Simpler
|| 
|| Emacs
|| Manuals
|| Are 
|| Cryptic and
|| Surreal
|| 
|| Energetic
|| Merchants
|| Always
|| Cultivate
|| Sales
|| 
|| Each
|| Manual's
|| Audience is
|| Completely
|| Stupified
|| 
|| Emacs
|| Means
|| A
|| Crappy
|| Screen
|| 
|| Eventually
|| Munches
|| All
|| Computer
|| Storage
|| 
|| Even 
|| My 
|| Aunt
|| Crashes the
|| System
|| 
|| Eradication of 
|| Memory
|| Accomplished with
|| Complete
|| Simplicity
|| 
|| Elsewhere
|| Maybe
|| Alternative
|| Civilizations
|| Survive
|| 
|| Egregious
|| Managers
|| Actively
|| Court
|| Stallman
|| 
|| Esoteric
|| Malleability
|| Always
|| Considered
|| Silly
|| 
|| Emacs
|| Manuals
|| Always
|| Cause
|| Senility
|| 
|| Easily
|| Maintained with the
|| Assistance of
|| Chemical
|| Solutions
|| 
|| EMACS
|| MACRO
|| ACTED
|| CREDO
|| SODOM
|| 
|| Edwardian
|| Manifestation of
|| All
|| Colonial
|| Sins
|| 
|| Generally
|| Not
|| Used
|| 
|| Except by
|| Middle
|| Aged
|| Computer
|| Scientists
|| 
|| Extended
|| Macros
|| Are
|| Considered
|| Superfluous
|| 
|| Every
|| Mode
|| Accelerates
|| Creation of
|| Software
|| 
|| Elsewhere
|| Maybe
|| All
|| Commands are
|| Simple
|| 
|| Emacs
|| May
|| Allow
|| Customised
|| Screwups
|| 
|| Excellent
|| Manuals
|| Are
|| Clearly
|| Suppressed
|| 
|| Emetic
|| Macros
|| Assault
|| Core and
|| Segmentation
|| 
|| Embarrassed
|| Manual-Writer
|| Accused of
|| Communist
|| Subversion
|| 
|| Extensibilty and 
|| Modifiability
|| Aggravate
|| Confirmed
|| Simpletons
|| 
|| Emacs
|| May
|| Annihilate
|| Command
|| Structures
|| 
|| Easily
|| Mangles,
|| Aborts,
|| Crashes and
|| Stupifies
|| 
|| Extraneous
|| Macros
|| And
|| Commands
|| Stink
|| 
|| Exceptionally
|| Mediocre
|| Algorithm for
|| Computer
|| Scientists
|| 
|| EMACS
|| Makes no
|| Allowances
|| Considering its
|| Stiff price
|| 
|| Equine
|| Mammals
|| Are
|| Considerably
|| Smaller
|| 
|| Embarrasingly
|| Mundane
|| Advertising
|| Cuts
|| Sales
|| 
|| Every
|| Moron
|| Assumes
|| CCA is
|| Superior
|| 
|| Exceptionally
|| Mediocre
|| Autocratic
|| Control
|| System
|| 
|| EMACS
|| May
|| Alienate
|| Clients and
|| Supporters
|| 
|| Excavating
|| Mayan
|| Architecture
|| Comes
|| Simpler
|| 
|| Erasing 
|| Minds
|| Allows 
|| Complete
|| Submission
|| 
|| Every
|| Male
|| Adolescent
|| Craves
|| Sex
|| 
|| Elephantine
|| Memory
|| Absolutely
|| Considered
|| Sine que non
|| 
|| Emacs 
|| Makers
|| Are
|| Crazy
|| Sickos
|| 
|| Eenie-Meenie-Miney-Mo-
|| Macros
|| Are
|| Completely
|| Slow
|| 
|| Experience the
|| Mildest
|| Ad
|| Campaign ever
|| Seen
|| 
|| Emacs
|| Makefiles
|| Annihilate
|| C-
|| Shells
|| 
|| Eradication of
|| Memory
|| Accomplished with
|| Complete
|| Simplicity
|| 
|| Emetic
|| Macros
|| Assault
|| Core and
|| Segmentation
|| 
|| Epileptic
|| MLisp
|| Aggravates
|| Compiler
|| Seizures
|| 
|| Eleven thousand
|| Monkeys
|| Asynchronously
|| Crank out these
|| Slogans
|| -------
|| 
|| From: ihnss!warren@mit-eddie (Warren Montgomery)
|| Newsgroups: net.emacs
|| Subject: Re: EMACS -- What does it mean?
|| Date: Tue, 10-Sep-85 09:14:24 EDT
|| Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
|| Apparently-To: emacs-netnews-distribution@mit-prep
|| 
|| Someone at a luncheon suggested it meant:
|| 
|| Evenings,
|| Mornings,
|| And a 
|| Couple of
|| Saturdays
|| 
|| (In reference to the odd hours that went into the creation of my
|| implementation).
|| 
|| -- 
|| 
|| 	Warren Montgomery
|| 	ihnss!warren
|| 	IH ((312)-979) x2494
|| 
|| Date: Wed, 18 Sep 85 10:11:04 edt
|| From: inmet!tower@inmet.inmet (Leonard H. Tower Jr.) <inmet!tower@cca-unix>
|| Subject: Re: EMACS -- What does it mean?
|| To: to...@MIT-PREP.ARPA
|| 
|| Received: by inmet.uucp (4.12/inmet) id AA02199; Wed, 18 Sep 85 09:10:17 edt
|| Date: Wed, 18 Sep 85 09:10:17 edt
|| Message-Id: <8509181310.AA02199@inmet.uucp>
|| Uucp-Paths: {bellcore,ima,ihnp4}!inmet!tower
|| Arpa-Path: ima!inm...@CCA-UNIX.ARPA
|| Organization: 	Intermetrics, Inc., Cambridge, MA, USA
|| Home: 	36 Porter Street, Somerville, MA  02143, USA   +1 (617) 623-7739
|| /* Written  6:48 pm  Sep 14, 1985 by gml@ssc-vax in inmet:net.emacs */
|| /* ---------- "Re: EMACS -- What does it mean?" ---------- */
|| Pleeeeeeeze!!!  Nice try on the meaning of EMACS.  I believe the
|| correct acronym is:
|| 
|| Emacs 
|| Makes
|| All 
|| Computing 
|| Simple
|| 
|| Thank you, and Good Night
|| /* End of text from inmet:net.emacs */
|| 
|| From: ho95e!wcs@mit-eddie (Bill.Stewart.4K435.x0705)
|| Newsgroups: net.emacs
|| Subject: Re: EMACS -- What does it mean?
|| Date: Thu, 26-Sep-85 21:43:54 EDT
|| Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel NJ
|| Apparently-To: emacs-netnews-distribution@mit-prep
|| 
|| > > very interesting, but what does GNU stand for ?
|| > GNU = Gnu's Not UNIX. There is also MINCE, for Mince Is Not a Complete Emacs.
|| > More recursive acronyms, anyone?
|| Many people have also seen FINE Is Not Emacs, but the one that has
|| character is THief Isn't Even Fine.
|| -- 
|| ## Bill Stewart, AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel NJ 1-201-949-0705 ihnp4!ho95c!wcs
|| 
|| Path: mit-eddie!think!harvard!bbnccv!bbncca!linus!decvax!mcnc!ncsu!uvacs!edison!ta2
|| From: edison!ta2@mit-eddie (tom allebrandi)
|| Newsgroups: net.emacs
|| Subject: Re: Re: EMACS -- What does it mean?
|| Date: Sun, 29-Sep-85 18:11:55 EDT
|| Organization: General Electric's Mountain Resort
|| Apparently-To: emacs-netnews-distribution@mit-prep
|| 
|| > GNU = Gnu's Not UNIX. There is also MINCE, for Mince Is Not a Complete Emacs.
|| > 
|| > More recursive acronyms, anyone?
|| > 
|| 
|| For the DEC-system-10/20: FINE - Fine Is Not Emacs.....
|| 
|| -- 
|| ...............
|| tom allebrandi 2, general electric aco, charlottesville, va
|| {decvax,duke}!mcnc!ncsu!uvacs!edison!ta2
|| box 8106, charlottesville, va, 22906
|| (804) 978-5566
|| ...............
|| 
|| Date: Wed, 16 Oct 85 01:38:12 edt
|| From: inmet!tower (Leonard H. Tower Jr.) <inmet!tower@cca-unix>
|| Subject: more names
|| To: to...@MIT-PREP.ARPA
|| 
|| Received: by inmet.uucp (4.12/inmet) id AA12997; Tue, 15 Oct 85 22:31:39 edt
|| Date: Tue, 15 Oct 85 22:31:39 edt
|| Message-Id: <8510160231.AA12997@inmet.uucp>
|| Uucp-Paths: {bellcore,ima,ihnp4}!inmet!tower
|| Arpa-Path: ima!inm...@CCA-UNIX.ARPA
|| Organization: 	Intermetrics, Inc., Cambridge, MA, USA
|| Home: 	36 Porter Street, Somerville, MA  02143, USA   +1 (617) 623-7739
|| /* Written 12:20 pm  Oct 14, 1985 by rs@mirror.UUCP in inmet:net.emacs */
|| 
|| 
|| SINE:	Sine Is Not Emacs
|| 	(MIT Architecture Machine Group)
|| 
|| EINE:	Eine is Not Emacs
|| 	(MIT Lisp Machine)
|| 
|| ZWEI:	Zwei Was Eine Initially
|| 	("rev2" of EINE)
|| 
|| --
|| Rich $alz	{mit-eddie, ihnp4!inmet, wjh12, cca, datacube} !mirror!rs
|| Mirror Systems	2067 Massachusetts Ave.
|| 617-661-0777	Cambridge, MA, 02140
|| /* End of text from inmet:net.emacs */
|| 
|| Path: mit-eddie!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!gatech!ulysses!pajb
|| From: ulysses!pajb@mit-eddie (Paul Bennett)
|| Newsgroups: net.emacs
|| Subject: Here we go again ...
|| Date: Sat, 19-Oct-85 17:26:49 EDT
|| Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
|| Apparently-To: emacs-netnews-distribution@mit-prep
|| 
|| 
|| > EINE:	Eine is Not Emacs
|| > 	(MIT Lisp Machine)
|| >
|| > ZWEI:	Zwei Was Eine Initially
|| >	("rev2" of EINE)
|| 
|| DREI:	DREI - Really Emacs Inside
|| 	(Exists only in my head)
|| 
|| Paul.
|| 
|| UUCP:	{decvax,allegra,vax135,ucbvax}!ulysses!circe!pajb
|| DDD:	(201) 582 7346
|| USPS:	AT&T Bell Labs, Room 5E-103, Murray Hill, NJ 07974
|| 
|| .. I don't care WHO you are, you're not walking on the water while I'M fishing.-- 
|| Paul.
|| 
|| UUCP:	{decvax,allegra,vax135,ucbvax}!ulysses!circe!pajb
|| DDD:	(201) 582 7346
|| USPS:	AT&T Bell Labs, Room 5E-103, Murray Hill, NJ 07974
|| 
|| .. I don't care WHO you are, you're not walking on the water while I'M fishing.

Just another Emacs hacker,
-- 
/== Randal L. Schwartz, Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095 ====\
| on contract to Intel's iWarp project, Beaverton, Oregon, USA, Sol III  |
| mer...@iwarp.intel.com ...!uunet!iwarp.intel.com!merlyn                |
\== Cute Quote: "Welcome to Oregon... Home of the California Raisins!" ==/

In article <43...@brazos.Rice.edu> pre...@titan.rice.edu (Preston Briggs) writes:
>My favorites were on the LISP Machine: EINE and ZWEI
>	Eine
>	Is
>	Not
>	Emacs
>and
>	Zwei
>	Was
>	Emacs (or Eine?)
>	Initially
>Self-recursive acronyms, plus the series iterates, in German anyway.

For a Previous Employer, I had to write an easily-usable-by-VMS-and-other-
business-weenies editor (that ran on the Lispm) which was named: DRIE

       DRIE
       Really
       Isn't
       EDT

NICHAEL

(...and, yes, I know it isn't spelled right.)

In article <21...@unix.cis.pitt.edu> no...@unix.cis.pitt.edu (nancy nott) writes:
>In the same vein as all of the posts about TECO, VAX, and PDP....
>What does Emacs mean?  

Editing MACroS.

Work on EMACS started in the summer of 1976.  The people who worked on
it primarily at that time were Guy Steele, Richard Stallman, and Dave
Moon.

EMACS was written in TECO, but not the TECO that most people know.
Most people know a very stripped-down and bastardized TECO which Bob
Clements adapted for the DEC operating system for the PDP-6.  The
original TECO was written by Dan Murphy for the PDP-1, and later
reimplemented on the PDP-6 (by, if I remember correctly, Richard
Greenblatt, Jack Holloway, and Tom Knight in a single weekend!).  The
original TECO used a display scope to display the text being edited
around the editing point.  It remained a source of wonder and
astonishment to the original authors of TECO that anyone ever used it
without a display screen.  This TECO ran on MIT's operating system for
the PDP-6 and PDP-10, ITS (Incompatible TimeSharing).

At Stanford, a different track of display editors had developed, again
starting with the display scope on the PDP-1.  The two surviving today
are TVEDIT for Tenex/TOPS-20 and E for WAITS.  Richard Stallman
visited the Stanford AI Lab and was impressed by E's real-time editing
facility.  When he returned to MIT, he implemented so-called "^R mode"
(a real time editing mode in TECO invoked by the CTRL/R command) in
TECO.

Although ^R mode made a whole new style of editing possible (unlike E
and TVEDIT, the default action for newly typed in text was insert
rather than replace), it was still rather primitive.  The search was
for a single character only, and you would still have to go back to
TECO to do lots of things (such as read or write files!).

Two major sets of TECO macro packages (a "macro" is a program, written
in TECO, stored in a TECO register) developed; TECMAC and TMACS.
TECMAC was a more real-time editor, while TMACS had a much richer set
of functionality including named commands.  Just about everybody had
their own customizations on top of these packages.

This was the situation when I worked at MIT in the summer of '76.  I
had brought with me my own favorite TECO-style editor, which, although
it had only the functionality of primitive DEC TECO, had two
interesting facilities: (1) it compiled all TECO programs (including
commands) prior to execution, and (2) it had multi-character register
names, which greatly increased the number of possible TECO registers
to virtually infinite.

Richard Stallman implemented the latter in TECO as part of the EMACS
project, which was originally intended as a replacement for both
TECMAC and TMACS.  By New Years in 1977 EMACS had made significant
inroads against TECMAC/TMACS; and in another year or so the older
editors had both succumbed to software rot.

Michael McMahon was irritated at the editor situation for Tenex and
TOPS-20; the alternatives at that time ranged from TVEDIT to QED to TV
(a DEC TOPS-20 TECO-like program with display terminal functionality
much like that of the 1964 MIT TECO).  He undertook the long and
laborious task of porting MIT EMACS from ITS to Tenex and TOPS-20, and
by 1978 EMACS was running on a small set of Tenex and TOPS-20 systems
at MIT, Stanford, and SRI.  Richard Stallman did heroic efforts to
propagate the mass (and free) distribution to just about every TOPS-20
system in the work.

This guaranteed EMACS a place in the sun.  Without McMahon and
Stallman's efforts we'd probably all be using vi or worse today.

In the 1980's, TOPS-20 had reached its zenith.  Because of horribly
high maintenance costs (DEC was trying to shut down the product line
in favor of VAX/VMS, and finally did in 1983), many sites were
migrating from TOPS-20.  Not trusting DEC, many sites picked UNIX as
their migration path instead of VMS.  There were a few critical
TOPS-20 tools which "must" be ported before the migration; and one of
those was EMACS.

The rest is well-known...
 _____     ____ ---+---   /-\   Mark Crispin           Atheist & Proud
 _|_|_  _|_ ||  ___|__   /  /   6158 Lariat Loop NE    R90/6 pilot
|_|_|_| /|\-++- |=====| /  /    Bainbridge Island, WA  "Gaijin! Gaijin!"
 --|--   | |||| |_____|   / \   USA  98110-2098        "Gaijin ha doko ka?"
  /|\    | |/\| _______  /   \  +1 (206) 842-2385      "Niichan ha gaijin."
 / | \   | |__| /     \ /     \ m...@CAC.Washington.EDU "Chigau. Gaijin ja nai.
kisha no kisha ga kisha de kisha-shita                  Omae ha gaijin darou."
sumomo mo momo, momo mo momo, momo ni mo iroiro aru    "Iie, boku ha nihonjin."
uraniwa ni wa niwa, niwa ni wa niwa niwatori ga iru    "Souka. Yappari gaijin!"

In article <21...@unix.cis.pitt.edu> no...@unix.cis.pitt.edu (nancy nott) writes:
>In the same vein as all of the posts about TECO, VAX, and PDP....
>What does Emacs mean?  

It is one of those clever recursive acronyms:

	EMACS Makes All Computers Slow

:-)

							spl (the p stands for
							press
							ctrl-meta-left-elbow
							to change all
							occurrences of foo to
							bar...)
-- 
Steve Lamont, sciViGuy	(919) 248-1120		EMail:	s...@ncsc.org
NCSC, Box 12732, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709
"That's People's Commissioner Tirebiter -- and NOBODY'S sweetheart!"
					- F. Scott Firesign

And, my favorite:

Evil
Manifestation
Also
Called 
Satan

P.S. - I love EMACS (I'm using it now!) I just like the acronym!

In article <21...@unix.cis.pitt.edu> no...@unix.cis.pitt.edu (nancy nott) writes:
>What does Emacs mean?  
"Emacs Makes A Computer Slow".  It's recursive, too!

Insert :-)'s where you feel they are needed.
-- 
Skate UNIX
J. Eric Townsend -- uunet!sugar!flatline!jet -- j...@flatline.lonestar.org
EastEnders mailing list -- east...@flatline.lonestar.org

In article <61...@alvin.mcnc.org> spl@mcnc.org.UUCP (Steve Lamont) writes:
>In article <61...@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> ju...@sdbio2.ucsd.edu (Jude Poole) writes:
>>On I-15 between Los Angeles and Las Vegas there is a road with the
>>name Xyyzzy or something very similar (I fly nowadays and so haven't
>>seen it in a while) This may be where he got the word but I have no
>>way of verifying it.
>
>Actually it is Zzyzx Road.  Whatever the hell that is.

One day as I was driving home from an Amateur Radio Convention in L.V. (anybody
here remember SAROC?), a friend of mine and I decided we had a few extra
hours to kill, so we did some exploring.  Zzyzx road north of the freeway
goes nowhere - a dead end maybe 1/4 mile from the ramp.  Southbound the 
pavement ends the same 1/4 mile, but a well maintained (in '80 or so) dirt
road goes for about 30 minutes and with just around a blind turn ends
at a barbed-wire-and-2x4s gate.  My '69 Rambler, at that time, had a cracked
exhaust manifold and the noise brought a gentleman out of a run-down house
trailer with a shotgun in his hands (this was about 3pm or so).  Don and I
were smart enough to make no sudden moves and after we explained we were
just curious what Zzyzx was, the gentleman put the gun down and invited us
in for coffee & cokes.  It turns out that Zzyzx was a '30s hot springs
resort that went broke, and the gentleman lived there in a trailer as a
gurad for the buildings, which were in surprisingly good shape (at least
the exteriors - Don and I didn't ask if we could get a tour, and none
was offered).  Supposedly a fleet of busses ran from LA's Union Rail
Station to ZZyzx and back, and the 30s movie stars were the most frequent
guests.  There is no ACpower, no telephone, and communications is limited
to commercial two-way radio (nowadays cellular phones would work there too),
and CB.


All this is 9-10 year old memory, and unverified.

Mike Morris                      Internet:  Mor...@Jade.JPL.NASA.gov
                                 Misslenet: 34.12 N, 118.02 W
#Include quote.cute.standard     Bellnet:   818-447-7052
#Include disclaimer.standard     Radionet:  WA6ILQ

In article <45...@rtech.rtech.com> reb@squid.UUCP ("REB - Tennessee Lamb") writes:
| Does the word "xyzzy" have an origin earlier than the Colossal Cave adventure
| game? Where exactly did it come from?

  I don't know where it came from, but my daughter was once playing
another adventure game (Isle of {something}) and typed it. She got back
the response "We do not recycle used magic words from other games."
Broke us up.
-- 
	bill davidsen - sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX
davidsen@sixhub.uucp		...!uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen

"Getting old is bad, but it beats the hell out of the alternative" -anon

> Does the word "xyzzy" have an origin earlier than the Colossal Cave adventure
> game? Where exactly did it come from?

It may be just coincidence, but on the road from Las Vegas to Barstow,
CA are several large green signs for "Zzyzx Road." I believe the
actual road was just rocks and dirt. Giving someone directions could
be problematical due to nonlinear pronounciation :-)

- Steve.

In article <43...@brazos.Rice.edu> pre...@titan.rice.edu (Preston Briggs) writes:
>>Emacs
>>Makes
>>A
>>Computer
>>Slow.
>
>Well, that's harsh!  More accurately, Extensible MACro.
>
>My favorites were on the LISP Machine: EINE and ZWEI
>
>	Eine
>	Is
>	Not
>	Emacs
>and
>	Zwei
>	Was
>	Emacs (or Eine?)
>	Initially
>

One of my professors has taken up a liking to these kinds of acronyms.
His favorite: XINU

Xinu
Is
Not
Unix

My personal favorite is Douglas Hofstadter's TATO:

Tato (And Tato Only)

Double your recursion, double your pleasure...

Side note (intended to get the line of discussion even further off the track):

Why Tato?  Simple.  He wanted to use it in conjunction with a non-recursively
acronymed function "hotpo" (Half Or Triple Plus One; N/2 for even N, 3N+1
for odd N).  Thus he could write a Lisp statement:

(hotpo tato)

Arrrrrrghhhhhhh......

Kevin Podsiadlik				     g...@mentor.cc.purdue.edu
"There.  That looks good.  We should have this .sig ready by Valentine's Day."

> > In the same vein as all of the posts about TECO, VAX, and PDP....
> > What does Emacs mean?  

> Emacs > Makes > A > Computer > Slow.

Actually, if you look in /usr/include/errno.h, you'll see that it's a UNIX
error code: EMACS -- Editor Too Large.
-- 
Peter "Have you hugged your wolf today" da Silva <pe...@sugar.hackercorp.com>
`-_-'
 'U`  "I haven't lost my mind, it's backed up on tape somewhere"

In article <422@sixhub.UUCP> davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes:
>
>  I don't know where it [xyzzy] came from, but my daughter was once playing
>another adventure game (Isle of {something}) and typed it. She got back
>the response "We do not recycle used magic words from other games."
>Broke us up.

Not bad. Typing in 'PLUGH' in Level 9's Snowball invoked a robot which
accused you of insanity and then threw the player into a padded cell in
the game. Most level 9 games gave some sort of response to the old
Crowther and Woods magic words.

no...@unix.cis.pitt.edu (nancy nott) writes:

>In the same vein as all of the posts about TECO, VAX, and PDP....
>What does Emacs mean?  

My favorite one is the following:

	Escape Meta Alt Control Shift

No, I'm not the author of that; someone posted it in the usenet some months ago.
-- 
Georg Wittig   GMD-Z1.BI   P.O. Box 1240   D-5205 St. Augustin 1 (West Germany)
email: wittig@gmdzi.uucp   phone: (+49 2241) 14-2294
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose" (Kris Kristofferson)

In article <66...@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>, g3q@mentor (Kevin J Podsiadlik) writes:
| One of my professors has taken up a liking to these kinds of acronyms.
| His favorite: XINU
| 
| Xinu
| Is
| Not
| Unix

One of the projects inside Tektronix was called "TINA" for "This Is No
Acronym".

And, another document I had read at Tek mentioned the use of "TLAs",
which was defined in the footnote (in tiny print) as "Three Letter
Acronyms".

Just another person who got their college education at Tek :-),
-- 
/== Randal L. Schwartz, Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095 ====\
| on contract to Intel's iWarp project, Beaverton, Oregon, USA, Sol III  |
| mer...@iwarp.intel.com ...!uunet!iwarp.intel.com!merlyn                |
\== Cute Quote: "Welcome to Oregon... Home of the California Raisins!" ==/

Eight						Exceptionally
Megabytes					Mystifying
And				--or--		Arcane
Constantly					Command
Swapping					Syntax

"When you're serious about having	|  Robert Menke
 fun, it's not much fun at all!"	|    r...@OCF.berkeley.edu
		-- Calvin & Hobbes	|    Robert...@bmug.fidonet.org
		TEAM CS -- Making Tomorrow's Mistakes Today!

In article <422@sixhub.UUCP> davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes:
}In article <45...@rtech.rtech.com> reb@squid.UUCP ("REB - Tennessee Lamb") writes:
}| Does the word "xyzzy" have an origin earlier than the Colossal Cave adventure
}| game? Where exactly did it come from?
}
}  I don't know where it came from, but my daughter was once playing
}another adventure game (Isle of {something}) and typed it. She got back
}the response "We do not recycle used magic words from other games."
}Broke us up.

There's a similar message in the original ADVENT (only 6 character program
names under RSTS/E).  If you typed in "abracadabra" it responded with
"Nice try, but that is an old, worn-out magic word."

-- 
The Polymath (aka: Jerry Hollombe, holl...@ttidca.tti.com)  Illegitimis non
Citicorp(+)TTI                                                 Carborundum
3100 Ocean Park Blvd.   (213) 450-9111, x2483
Santa Monica, CA  90405 {csun | philabs | psivax}!ttidca!hollombe

In article <61...@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> ju...@sdbio2.ucsd.edu (Jude Poole) writes:
>>
>>I believe that Will just made it up [much as he made up near everything else
 [---]
>On I-15 between Los Angeles and Las Vegas there is a road with the
[---]
  I thought that a guy from Florida wrote the original "adventure"
  game in BASIC.  His name was "Scott Adams"  Even if this is
  (in)complete heresay I would be interested in knowing whatever
  happened to this guy.

--
    Kevin Carothers           {philabs,csun,psivax}!ttidca!kevin
~

>Actually, if you look in /usr/include/errno.h, you'll see that it's a UNIX
>error code: EMACS -- Editor Too Large.

Much as I hate to do this:

<=>tera<=>ls -l /usr/ucb/vi /usr/local/bin/me
-rwxr-xr-x  2 root       122880 Jan  7 15:47 /usr/local/bin/microemacs*
-rwxr-xr-x  6 root       147456 Apr 24  1989 /usr/ucb/vi*

In article <92...@ttidca.TTI.COM> ke...@ttidca.TTI.COM (Kevin Carothers) writes:
     I thought that a guy from Florida wrote the original "adventure"
     game in BASIC.  His name was "Scott Adams"  Even if this is
     (in)complete heresay I would be interested in knowing whatever
     happened to this guy.

As I remember it, Scott Adams was the first to write a text adventure
game for a microcomputer (the TRS-80 Model I), after being inspired by
the original FORTRAN Adventure, and being told that it couldn't be
done.  He wrote, in BASIC, a program to create a data file which
described an adventure game, along with another BASIC program to
interpret the data file and play the game.  Later it was all recoded
in assembler, and ported to other machines.  I believe he eventually
came out with around 15 games.

BYTE published an article quite a few years ago which detailed the
history of his games, and included a listing of the original BASIC
version of his adventure interpreter, along with the listing of one of
the early adventures.

BTW, this is all via my somewhat fuzzy memory, since it's been a
couple of years since I've seen the article.

I do recall quite vividly, however, playing the games on my brother's
Atari 800, after waiting around 20 minutes for them to load from
cassette tape.  Long live disk drives!!

Lane		l...@usl.edu   ...!texbell!rouge!lar

In article <92...@ttidca.TTI.COM> ke...@ttidcb.tti.com (Kevin Carothers) writes:
>  I thought that a guy from Florida wrote the original "adventure"
>  game in BASIC.  His name was "Scott Adams"  Even if this is
>  (in)complete heresay I would be interested in knowing whatever
>  happened to this guy.

   I'm fairly certain he didn't write the original.  He did, however, release
a series of pretty good adventure games thru Adventure International (do they
still exist?) and an adventure game creator.  
   Don't know what he's up to now.

-- 
David L. Newton                 |           uunet!marque!carroll1!dnewton 
(414) 524-7343 (work)           |              dne...@carroll1.cc.edu   
(414) 524-6809 (home)           |           100 NE Ave, Waukesha WI 53186

In article <422@sixhub.UUCP> davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes:
>In article <45...@rtech.rtech.com> reb@squid.UUCP ("REB - Tennessee Lamb") writes:
>| Does the word "xyzzy" have an origin earlier than the Colossal Cave adventure
>| game? Where exactly did it come from?
>  I don't know where it came from, but my daughter was once playing
>another adventure game (Isle of {something}) and typed it. She got back
>the response "We do not recycle used magic words from other games."
>Broke us up.

I think Zork says "That's an old worn out  magic word. Try  another," when you
try typing in xyzzy.
                                        reb
                                r...@rtech.com reb%rt...@lll-winken.llnl.GOV
                                h:861 Washington Westwood NJ 07675 201-666-9207
Just say 'NO!' to rugs
This message sponsored by the American Hardwood Floor Association.

A little off the beaten track but:
Emacs Manual:

To kill Emacs, type @kbd(C-x C-c) (@code(save-buffers-kill-emacs).
A two character key is used for this to make it harder to type.

Emacs happens to be my favorite editor, and yes the above is understandable to
those who use it.
NJC

I'd believe that excruciatingly detailed history of EMACS.
However, I think that the influence of ice cream on computer systems,
especially around MIT, can't be underestimated.  EMACS was the text editor,
and the document formatter was known as BOLIO.  Now, at the time, one of
the better known premium ice cream places was Emac and Bolio's.  Let's not
forget mixins in Lisp Machine Lisp (or flavors)....

=Bill=

In article <17...@castle.ed.ac.uk>, ai...@castle.ed.ac.uk (David A. Sinclair)
says:
>In article <422@sixhub.UUCP> davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes:
>>  I don't know where it [xyzzy] came from, but my daughter was once playing
>>another adventure game (Isle of {something}) and typed it. She got back
>>the response "We do not recycle used magic words from other games."
>>Broke us up.

>Not bad. Typing in 'PLUGH' in Level 9's Snowball invoked a robot which...

That's strange.. PLUGH was the 'magic' word in one of the origional
adventure games, Pyramid 2000, written for the TRS-80 model I
It wasn't really all that magical.. it just rearranged the directions
so that north was actually east.. etc.. Thereby confusing the user.

                                                      Dave
| David Barr           |  I did! I did! I did saw a puddy tat!!    |
| DSB...@psuvm.psu.edu |  Where's the kaboom? There was supposed   |
| DSB100@psuvm         |    to be an earth-shattering kaboom!      |
| 7214...@compuserve.com  |
|        There's too much blood in my alcohol system!              |

In article <49...@sugar.hackercorp.com> pe...@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
#> > In the same vein as all of the posts about TECO, VAX, and PDP....
#> > What does Emacs mean?  
#
#> Emacs > Makes > A > Computer > Slow.

Eight Megabytes and Constantly Swapping
-- 
adam margulies                                    metaware incorporated
                                                  INTERNET: ad...@metaware.com
                                                  UUCP:     uunet!metaware!adam
                                                  ATT:      (408)429-META x3016

In article <90024.134216DSB100@PSUVM.BITNET> DSB100@PSUVM.BITNET (David Barr) writes:
>That's strange.. PLUGH was the 'magic' word in one of the origional
>adventure games, Pyramid 2000, written for the TRS-80 model I
>It wasn't really all that magical.. it just rearranged the directions
>so that north was actually east.. etc.. Thereby confusing the user.

Pyramid 2000 was my very first adventure game. I remember being very
disappointed when I played ADVENT for the first time (on a *real*
system, a Micromation multiple-CPU MP/M machine with *5* Megs of
winchester!) and realized that Pyramid was but a shrunken-down
replica of ADVENT.

I was frustrated by Pyramid, so I did a pass with T-BUG. Commands
(like PLUGH) showed up, but the text messages were compressed to make
it fit into the massive 16K of RAM my TRS-80 had. Boy, those were
impressive machines....

>| David Barr           |  I did! I did! I did saw a puddy tat!!    |
>| DSB...@psuvm.psu.edu |  Where's the kaboom? There was supposed   |
_______________________________________________________________________________
 | |   |   |    |\ | |   /|\ | John K{llen         "God hates me. *That's* 
 | |\ \|/ \|  * |/ | |/|  |  | PoBox 11215          what it is." "Hate Him 
 | |\ /|\  |\ * |\ |   |  |  | Stanford CA 94309    back; it works for me."
_|_|___|___|____|_\|___|__|__|_jkl@csli.stanford.edu___________________________

In article <90024.134216DSB100@PSUVM.BITNET> (David Barr) writes:
>That's strange.. PLUGH was the 'magic' word in one of the origional
>adventure games, Pyramid 2000, written for the TRS-80 model I
>It wasn't really all that magical.. it just rearranged the directions
>so that north was actually east.. etc.. Thereby confusing the user.

  Er.... hate to burst your bubble, but the Trash-80 came onto the
market some **YEARS** after the original, FORTRAN, Colossal-Cave
ADVENTURE game written by Will Crowther and Don Woods was making the
rounds of numerous types of mainframes and minis.

  I first saw a listing in 1976.... and I'd been *hearing* about the
damn program for at *least* a year before that....... a quick look
at my copy of Levy's _Hackers_ gives the original year as 1974.

-- 
  Robert Bickford        {apple,pacbell,hplabs,ucbvax}!well!rab
  r...@well.sf.ca.us      /-------------------------------------\
                         | Don't Blame Me: I Voted Libertarian |
                         \-------------------------------------/

In article <11...@csli.Stanford.EDU> j...@csli.stanford.edu (John Kallen) writes:
>I was frustrated by Pyramid, so I did a pass with T-BUG. Commands
>(like PLUGH) showed up, but the text messages were compressed to make
>it fit into the massive 16K of RAM my TRS-80 had. Boy, those were
>impressive machines....

I seem to remember that there was a version of Star Trek for the TRS-80
that had to call the Klingons "Klings", because otherwise the program was
too big to fit in memory.

>_______________________________________________________________________________
> | |   |   |    |\ | |   /|\ | John K{llen         "God hates me. *That's* 
> | |\ \|/ \|  * |/ | |/|  |  | PoBox 11215          what it is." "Hate Him 
> | |\ /|\  |\ * |\ |   |  |  | Stanford CA 94309    back; it works for me."
>_|_|___|___|____|_\|___|__|__|_jkl@csli.stanford.edu___________________________


Ian Flanigan

fl...@ai.wustl.edu              "You can never have too many napkins."
wucs1.wustl.edu!ai!flan@uucp

Does anyone have the Cave Adventure game in machine readable
format?
I may have it in my attic in hard copy.

-------
Jack Meth
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
New York, NY 10019
BITNET JKMJJ@CUNYVM

"When all is said and done, more is said than done." A.E.N.

(There's gonna be a few postings like this)

You got MicroGnuEmacs there, son.  No lisp, and not a lot else.

jessicar 1776% ll /usr/local/bin/emacs
-r-xr-xr-x   1 bin    bin    1860685 Jan 22 12:46 emacs

kean
Oregon State University                          Kean Stump
College of Oceanography                          ke...@cs.orst.edu 
Corvallis, Oregon                               {tektronix,hp-pcd}!orstcs!kean
The opinions in this article are MINE, not my employers. Don't Worry About Them.

In article <15...@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU> kean...@oce.orst.edu (Kean Stump) writes:

>You got MicroGnuEmacs there, son.  No lisp, and not a lot else.

No, I do not bloody have MicroGnuEmacs there, dad.  I have MicroEmacs.
No Lisp.  Whoopie.  I don't often need to run eliza in my editor.

>jessicar 1776% ll /usr/local/bin/emacs
>-r-xr-xr-x   1 bin    bin    1860685 Jan 22 12:46 emacs

The point that I was trying to make [which absolutely nobody seems
to have comprehended], is that you can't speak of the size of "emacs"
because there is no standard/reference "emacs".  All too many people seem
to think that "emacs" means "gnu emacs", which (regardless of your preferences)
is wrong.

"emacs" can be applied to a wide spectrum of editors, including MicroEmacs,
Epsilon, Jove, Unipress Emacs, GnuEmacs, PDP-10 Emacs, etc.

If you insist on considering any one implementation the "real" one, then it
would have to be the ITS one.

1.8 meg unstripped -g'd gnu binaries certainly are not a "reference"
implementation.

In article <50...@convex.convex.com> da...@convex.com (Anthony A. Datri) writes:
>In article <15...@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU> kean...@oce.orst.edu (Kean Stump) writes:
>
>>You got MicroGnuEmacs there, son.  No lisp, and not a lot else.
>
>No, I do not bloody have MicroGnuEmacs there, dad.  I have MicroEmacs.
>No Lisp.  Whoopie.  I don't often need to run eliza in my editor.
>
>>jessicar 1776% ll /usr/local/bin/emacs
>>-r-xr-xr-x   1 bin    bin    1860685 Jan 22 12:46 emacs
>
>The point that I was trying to make [which absolutely nobody seems
>to have comprehended], is that you can't speak of the size of "emacs"
>because there is no standard/reference "emacs".  All too many people seem
>to think that "emacs" means "gnu emacs", which (regardless of your preferences)
>is wrong.
>
>"emacs" can be applied to a wide spectrum of editors, including MicroEmacs,
>Epsilon, Jove, Unipress Emacs, GnuEmacs, PDP-10 Emacs, etc.
>
>If you insist on considering any one implementation the "real" one, then it
>would have to be the ITS one.
>
>1.8 meg unstripped -g'd gnu binaries certainly are not a "reference"
>implementation.

But if everyone *were* using that incredibly tiny version you seem to
have, there wouldn't be any problems.  Unfortunately, few people are.
Here at RPI:

-rwxr-xr-x  1 gnu       1171456 Nov  2 23:45 /usr/local/lib/emacs/bin/emacs

Kevin Martin
si...@pawl.rpi.edu

In article <W12...@rpi.edu>, sigma@pawl (Kevin J Martin) writes:
]
]But if everyone *were* using that incredibly tiny version you seem to
]have, there wouldn't be any problems.  Unfortunately, few people are.
]Here at RPI:
]
]-rwxr-xr-x  1 gnu       1171456 Nov  2 23:45 /usr/local/lib/emacs/bin/emacs

Well, that's not the whole story either:

[2(rlk)||{!1130}<underprize.think.com>/tmp_mnt/am/u9/rlk/bin]
% ps ux
USER       PID %CPU %MEM   SZ  RSS TT STAT START  TIME COMMAND
rlk        446  0.0 11.419976 1740 p0 S    Jan 15111:55 gmacs -display underpriz

[note that that's 111 minutes of Sparc CPU time].

Emacs:  it's not just an editor, it's a way of life.
-- 
ames >>>>>>>>>  |	Robert Krawitz <r...@think.com>	245 First St.
bloom-beacon >  |think!rlk	(postmaster)		Cambridge, MA  02142
harvard >>>>>>  .	Thinking Machines Corp.		(617)876-1111

 
> I believe that Will just made it up [much as he made up near everything else
> in Adventure].  I can ask him, but I'm really quite sure that it was just
> random-letters.
> 
>   /Bernie\
> 

If you know him;  I have a question I have been fairly itching to ask;

I read a book called "The Longest Cave" which was all about the exploration of
the Mammoth Cave / Colossal Cave complex in TN.  (There IS a place named "Y2",
there IS a "Bedquilt")  In this book is a picture of a woman named Pat
Crowthers (I dont really remember the correct spelling, sorry if I got
it wrong.)
who is mapping the cave on an IBM 1130 with a pen plotter.  My question is
if this woman is related to the adventure author of the same last name?

Thanks!

-Ben Burch

bu...@quik07.enet.dec.com (Ben Burch) writes:


} 
}> I believe that Will just made it up [much as he made up near everything else
}> in Adventure].  I can ask him, but I'm really quite sure that it was just
}> random-letters.

As a footnote, I did ask him and he did make it up.  All the purported
etymologies are "folk"...

}I read a book called "The Longest Cave" which was all about the exploration of
}the Mammoth Cave / Colossal Cave complex in TN.  (There IS a place named "Y2",
}there IS a "Bedquilt")  In this book is a picture of a woman named Pat
}Crowthers (I dont really remember the correct spelling, sorry if I got
}it wrong.)
}who is mapping the cave on an IBM 1130 with a pen plotter.  My question is
}if this woman is related to the adventure author of the same last name?

Just so.  Patty was Will's wife at the time.  She is still involved in
caving, I think, but Will has been out of it for years.

  /Bernie\

In article <81...@shlump.nac.dec.com> bu...@quik07.enet.dec.com (Ben Burch) writes:

>I read a book called "The Longest Cave" which was all about the exploration of
>the Mammoth Cave / Colossal Cave complex in TN.  (There IS a place named "Y2",
>there IS a "Bedquilt")  In this book is a picture of a woman named Pat
>Crowthers (I dont really remember the correct spelling, sorry if I got
>it wrong.)

The book:

The Longest Cave
by Roger W. Brucker & Richard A. Watson
ISBN 0-394-48793-1
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.  NY

Is about the Mammoth Cave/Colossal Cave/[Flint Ridge system, and a host of
others] complex in Kentucky, rather than TN.  The system is over 300 mi in
length and is the longest known cave system in the world, nothing else even
comes close.  Pat Crowther was indeed on the party that linked Mammoth to 
the Flint Ridge system, and numerous other trips.  She is unrelated to 
anyone, however, including her family.



    hang gliding mailing list: hang-g...@virginia.edu 
Galen Hekhuis  UVa Health Sci Ctr (804)982-1646 g...@virginia.edu
    A woman needs a fish like an umbrella needs a bicycle

In article <90031.110345JKMJJ@CUNYVM.BITNET>, JKMJJ@CUNYVM writes:
> Does anyone have the Cave Adventure game in machine readable
> format?
> I may have it in my attic in hard copy.
> 

Silly you, didn't specify for which machine. I have it 8" SSSD for CP/M.
(Since I still have an 8" SSSD machine, I can still run it.)

===============================================================================
Roger Ivie

35 S 300 W
Logan, Ut.  84321
(801) 752-8633
===============================================================================

Pat Wilcox (formerly Crowther) is alive and well and living at the sign
of the Coolspring Banjo Works north of Columbus, Ohio.  She gave up
caving about ten years ago because of back trouble, but keeps busy
designing Amiga software and fonts, playing for square dances, and
being a brand new OSU grad student.  (Mid-terms -- aaaarrrrggggghhh!)

Yep, Colossal Cave, the spring house, the gate, the Hall of the Mountain
King, the maze of twisty little passages...  They're all real.  We typed
in all that survey data from muddy little books on a 110-baud teletype
to a PDP-1 (the survey code took advantage of an undocumented side-effect
of a custom-wired instruction that was only on that one machine, he he he).
Then generated plotting commands on huge rolls of paper tape, which we
carried over and plotted using a salvaged Calcomp drum plotter attached
to a Honeywell 316 that was destined to become an ARPAnet IMP.  (Will
Crowther did a lot of the original ARPAnet code, too, when he wasn't 
busy writing Adventure.)
.

(the only purpose of this comment is to flame someone out there)

I suppose you can tell Unix has arrived when self-proclaimed
illuminati have taken the "small is beautiful" ethos and reduced
it to:

	% ls -l /usr/ucb/vi /usr/local/bin/emacs
	-rwxrwxr-x  1 spike      794624 Nov 13 14:01 /usr/local/bin/emacs
	-rwxr-xr-x  6 root       196608 Apr 24  1989 /usr/ucb/vi

emacs > vi THEREFORE vi > emacs. QED.

(or whatever it is they're concluding, fill in the verb.)

Gee, I really wish software quality measurement was so simple...I
guess these are the same folks who go out and buy the (most/least)
expensive car they can find on the assumption that price==value.

(not to mention falling for cup-and-a-half of flavor advertisements)
-- 
        -Barry Shein

Software Tool & Die    | {xylogics,uunet}!world!bzs | b...@world.std.com
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202        | Login: 617-739-WRLD

In article <1990Feb13....@world.std.com> b...@world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes:
>062@convex.c
>Organization: The World @ Software Tool & Die
>Lines: 25
>In-Reply-To: da...@convex.com's message of 1 Feb 90 16:54:14 GMT
>
>
>(the only purpose of this comment is to flame someone out there)
>
>I suppose you can tell Unix has arrived when self-proclaimed
>illuminati have taken the "small is beautiful" ethos and reduced
>it to:
>
>	% ls -l /usr/ucb/vi /usr/local/bin/emacs
>	-rwxrwxr-x  1 spike      794624 Nov 13 14:01 /usr/local/bin/emacs
>	-rwxr-xr-x  6 root       196608 Apr 24  1989 /usr/ucb/vi
>
>emacs > vi THEREFORE vi > emacs. QED.
>
>(or whatever it is they're concluding, fill in the verb.)
>
>Gee, I really wish software quality measurement was so simple...I
>guess these are the same folks who go out and buy the (most/least)
>expensive car they can find on the assumption that price==value.
>
>(not to mention falling for cup-and-a-half of flavor advertisements)

Well, you might also consider:

% ls -ls /bin/sh /bin/csh /bin/ksh
 124 -rwxrwx--x   1 root       125594 Sep 29  1988 /bin/csh
 187 -rwxrwx--x   1 root       189459 Jun  9  1988 /bin/ksh
  63 -rwxrwx--x   1 root        62796 Sep 13  1988 /bin/sh

And especially this:
% ls -sl /vmunix
 864 -r-xr-xr-x  1 root       874838 Jan 30 08:56 /vmunix

I consider it an ultimate preposterosity to use an "editor" that
has the same order of magnitude as the UNIX operating system itself.
I'm sure emacs has some pretty neat features that are really useful
in select situations, but in the realm of composing a letter, using
emacs is simply the proverbial H-bomb vs. Ant, not to mention extremely
wasteful of system resources.
Tone down your flame, and think about what you're saying.

In article <1990Feb13....@world.std.com> b...@world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes:
>I suppose you can tell Unix has arrived when self-proclaimed
>illuminati have taken the "small is beautiful" ethos and reduced
>it to:
>
>	% ls -l /usr/ucb/vi /usr/local/bin/emacs
>	-rwxrwxr-x  1 spike      794624 Nov 13 14:01 /usr/local/bin/emacs
>	-rwxr-xr-x  6 root       196608 Apr 24  1989 /usr/ucb/vi
>
>emacs > vi THEREFORE vi > emacs. QED.
>
>(or whatever it is they're concluding, fill in the verb.)
>
>Gee, I really wish software quality measurement was so simple...I
>guess these are the same folks who go out and buy the (most/least)
>expensive car they can find on the assumption that price==value.

I'm not about to stick my head in the "which is better" trap.  However,
I might suggest that one reason Emacs is *so* large is that it currently
has everything but the kitchen sink.  I mean, REALLY--if you want to run
cellular automata, or write LISP, shouldn't you use an appropriate tool?  As
it is, Emacs can't be called simply a program editor; it eats most small
machines alive and spits out the bits.  The Unix credo of "small is beautiful"
can be overdone, I agree--but I do think the credo "Do one thing, but do it
well" is still a valid point.  Tools should be specialized, but with general
interfaces so they may be piped or otherwise used to build a more complex
environment.  I've heard few argue about the functional capabilities of
Emacs; I simply argue that if one tool that does everything is to be a desired
goal again, let's go right back and resurrect DEC's PIP...

In article <1990Feb14.2...@chinet.chi.il.us>,
ign...@chinet.chi.il.us (Dave Ihnat) writes:
> I might suggest that one reason Emacs is *so* large is that it currently
> has everything but the kitchen sink.  I mean, REALLY--if you want to run
> cellular automata, or write LISP, shouldn't you use an appropriate tool?

I suspect that many GnuEmacs fanatics are frustrated LispM hackers who
see GnuEmacs as a primitite LispM environment under Unix. Overheard at
a party years back at House Gorodish was the instructive quote: 
"I could *live* in GnuEmacs". Editor, programming environment, email,
news, window system, everything. And if you ever need a shell, you could
always run one of those in your emacs window, but why bother? If
GnuEmacs doesn't do it yet, just hack up a little lisp code, and you
are all set. 

GnuEmacs is not an editor, it is an environment that is completely
configurable and extensible. What more could you want? 

		=brian

P.S. Many of these comments apply to other full-featured emacs but none
so well as GnuEmacs.

br...@ima.isc.com
US 617-661-7474 x206
near the last bend in the Charles River

Well, actually, to be strictly accurate, some versions of GNU EMACS
DO include the kitchen sink.  When you make the X version of GNU
EMACS, the default icon (icon = small picture that appears as a
reminder that you have a program running, when you close a window)
is, in fact, an overflowing sink.


--
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brian Bartholomew	UUCP:       ...gatech!uflorida!beach.cis.ufl.edu!bb
University of Florida	Internet:   b...@beach.cis.ufl.edu