Some answers.
rms@mit-prep
I was away for several weeks and just cleared my backlog enough to
read net.emacs again. Here are some answers and responses.
1. I strongly urge people not to call set-input-mode from site-init.el.
To do this has the effect of making EVERYONE use flow control.
That is an unfortunate imposition on those who could manage to find
a properly designed terminal and connection. It is much more correct
to make Emacs check the terminal type or other suitable information
when it is started by the user, and decide on that basis whether it
is really necessary to use flow control.
2. GNU Emacs comes with an outline mode that provides at least some
of the functions that someone was asking for.
3. There is no manual yet for how to write programs in Emacs Lisp.
I urge people to read the Lisp sources for functions for purposes
related to their own.
4. The suggested Sun termcap that turns off insert/delete line
is probably a bad idea, because it ought to work to define the
AL and DL strings (and IC and DC strings) to tell Emacs how to
insert or delete many characters or lines at once. This is much
faster than repainting. I know that people with Suns have done this.
5. I would like to receive the exact code for alloca for the IS machine
and also the way to pad crt0.c by six bytes at the beginning of the text.
The problem that Emacs jumps back to its start might be found by putting
a breakpoint at 0 in adb.
6. GNU Emacs can be obtained from anyone who has a copy or by sending
$150 **payable to me** at
c/o Lisp Machine Inc
1000 Mass Ave
Cambridge, MA 02139
7. If you have ordered a tape and not got it yet, you will probably
get it soon. As you see, I decided to make a bug-fix release so that
you will get something clean. Since the bug-fix release is being
tested now, I expect to ship tapes this week.
8. I expect version 17 to be ready in a month or so, and to contain
support for Uniplus 5.2. Other sysV versions are more stupid and will
require some additional work.
9. People who think that alloca will not work on their machines should
explain their problems more precisely. So far, when people have done
that, I have found that alloca can indeed be made to work.