From: jnickelsen@acm.org (Juergen Nickelsen) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Emacsen (was Re: Folklore Documentation (was hidden APIs)) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 16:24:27 +0100 Organization: Unlimited Surprise Systems, Berlin Lines: 42 Message-ID: <1d2kbon.cr8opj1yhq2fiN@n163-181.berlin.snafu.de> References: <68dsv0$cep$1@shell15.ba.best.com> <34aace82.377062@news.cadvision.com> <883663907snz@tnglwood.demon.co.uk> <68jhl7$cbj$1@irk.zetnet.co.uk> <68jplb$4on$1@max75.public.ox.ac.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: n163-181.berlin.snafu.de X-Newsreader: MacSOUP 2.3 Path: ccw.ch!aetna.dolphins.ch!news.planetc.com!leto.ou.edu!hammer.uoregon.edu!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!howland.erols.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!fu-berlin.de!unlisys!news.snafu.de!jnickelsen remove .nospam wrote: > AFAIK Emacs (RMS/GNU at least) derived from the Emacs on the LMI Lisp > Machines, which were descendants of the MIT LispMs. TECO begat ITS Emacs which begat Gosling Emacs which begat GNU Emacs, IIRC. ITS Emacs was a (probably huge) set of macros for TECO, hence the name "Editing Macros", written (completely or mostly?) by Richard Stallman. Inspired by this, some time later James Gosling (now of Sun/Java fame) wrote the first Emacs with a Lisp interpreter (which was also the first Emacs for Unix). Inspired by this in turn, Richard Stallman wrote his own Lisp-based Emacs for Unix (and later other platforms) which became GNU Emacs. The Emacs variant on the Lispms is not related to this, I think. (Ah, and there were also EINE and the successor ZWEI on the Symbolics Lisp machines -- Eine Is Not Emacs; Zwei Was Eine Initially.) Initially Stallman used some portions of Gosling's code (with permission). This became an issue after Gosling had sold his Emacs to Unipress, which marketed the now-called Unipress Emacs commercially, and claimed that GNU Emacs violated Unipress's rights. Stallman rewrote these parts of GNU Emacs's code to keep Unipress off his back. (Which did not keep IBM to no longer distribute GNU Emacs which AIX due to this allegedly unresolved intellectual-propery issue.) > I would assume the MIT and LMI to have been similar. Emacs was then > most likely changed to 8+24 because byte oriented machines do that > faster. This was certainly the case when I last looked deeply into the Emacs sources, i.e. with GNU Emacs 18.55. But even at that time there was an option to use only the necessary 5 or 6 bits for tags and all others for the pointer, sacrificing speed for the possiblility of editing bigger files. (With a 24-bit signed integer, the maximum file size is 8 MB.) I think newer version of Emacs (at least XEmacs) use the maximum possible number of bits for the pointer by default -- speed is no longer as big an issue as it was with e.g. 68020-based machines or old VAXen. Can anyone confirm this? I don't have sources online at home. -- Juergen Nickelsen ###### From: jorn@mcs.com (Jorn Barger) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Emacsen (was Re: Folklore Documentation (was hidden APIs)) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 10:11:19 -0500 Organization: http://www.mcs.net/~jorn/html/weblog.html Lines: 11 Message-ID: <1d2mxeg.1lozui71br9sj6N@jorn.pr.mcs.net> References: <68dsv0$cep$1@shell15.ba.best.com> <34aace82.377062@news.cadvision.com> <883663907snz@tnglwood.demon.co.uk> <68jhl7$cbj$1@irk.zetnet.co.uk> <68jplb$4on$1@max75.public.ox.ac.uk> <1d2kbon.cr8opj1yhq2fiN@n163-181.berlin.snafu.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: jorn.pr.mcs.net X-Face: #0%K`N$`(&&tLbyv~^Ip59&CqKAo;?NXix@bv2a,uQX;y*zAek26=&iDOJou, 2\2pLI"TKqjx.[BfZf#2 wrote: > TECO begat ITS Emacs which begat Gosling Emacs which begat GNU Emacs, > IIRC. [...] My etext faq has many links on the origins of emacs, and the early history of word processing: j ###### From: thvv@best.com (Tom Van Vleck) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Emacsen (was Re: Folklore Documentation (was hidden APIs)) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 12:03:43 -0800 Organization: Multicians Lines: 15 Message-ID: References: <68dsv0$cep$1@shell15.ba.best.com> <34aace82.377062@news.cadvision.com> <883663907snz@tnglwood.demon.co.uk> <68jhl7$cbj$1@irk.zetnet.co.uk> <68jplb$4on$1@max75.public.ox.ac.uk> <1d2kbon.cr8opj1yhq2fiN@n163-181.berlin.snafu.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: thvv.vip.best.com X-Trace: 884462635 7982 (none) 206.86.0.12 X-newsreader: MT-NewsWatcher 2.2.2 X-url: http://www.best.com/~thvv/multics.html Path: ccw.ch!aetna.dolphins.ch!news.planetc.com!leto.ou.edu!hammer.uoregon.edu!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!howland.erols.net!newsxfer3.itd.umich.edu!news1.best.com!nntp2.ba.best.com!thvv.vip.best.com!user Juergen Nickelsen wrote: > ITS Emacs was a (probably huge) set of macros for TECO, hence the name > "Editing Macros", written (completely or mostly?) by Richard Stallman. > Inspired by this, some time later James Gosling (now of Sun/Java fame) > wrote the first Emacs with a Lisp interpreter (which was also the first > Emacs for Unix). What was the timeframe for Gosling's Lisp Emacs? I always thought Bernie Greenberg's 1978 Multics Emacs, written in MACLISP, was the first. See http://www.best.com/~thvv/mepap.html for Bernie's "vast, unpublished 1979 'Mother of All Multics Emacs papers'." ###### From: jnickelsen@acm.org (Juergen Nickelsen) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Emacsen (was Re: Folklore Documentation (was hidden APIs)) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 1998 01:28:46 +0100 Organization: Unlimited Surprise Systems, Berlin Lines: 23 Message-ID: <1d2o7h1.1d8cico18sfsaoN@n246-185.berlin.snafu.de> References: <68dsv0$cep$1@shell15.ba.best.com> <34aace82.377062@news.cadvision.com> <883663907snz@tnglwood.demon.co.uk> <68jhl7$cbj$1@irk.zetnet.co.uk> <68jplb$4on$1@max75.public.ox.ac.uk> <1d2kbon.cr8opj1yhq2fiN@n163-181.berlin.snafu.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: n246-185.berlin.snafu.de X-Newsreader: MacSOUP 2.3 Path: ccw.ch!aetna.dolphins.ch!news.planetc.com!news-xfer.siscom.net!fu-berlin.de!unlisys!news.snafu.de!jnickelsen Tom Van Vleck wrote: > Juergen Nickelsen wrote: [...] > > Inspired by this, some time later James Gosling (now of Sun/Java fame) > > wrote the first Emacs with a Lisp interpreter (which was also the first > > Emacs for Unix). > > What was the timeframe for Gosling's Lisp Emacs? > I always thought Bernie Greenberg's 1978 Multics Emacs, written in > MACLISP, was the first. I think Gosling Emacs was the first that *contained* a Lisp interpreter (of its own) rather than being based on an existing Lisp system. BTW, I don't claim any special authority in this area; I began using Emacs just barely 10 years ago, and all I know of the earlier days is just what I heard or read somewhere. Gosling Emacs *may* be from 1980 or a little later, but that's just a guess. -- Juergen Nickelsen