Learning Z vs Zmacs
dae...@ucbvax.uucp
From: RMS%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC
Please refrain from making the assumption that features of the Lisp
machine you got from Symbolics were done BY Symbolics. You are
inadvertently spreading their false advertising.
A point for the record; Despite RMS flamage, the original lisp
machine lardware was a product of the MIT-AI lab, principally
designed by Greenblatt, Knight, and Holloway; in proportions unknown
to me. They also collaborated on other lab products of the period.
The current lisp machine software was also developed at the MIT-AI
lab, by a multitude of grad students and staff hackers, many of whom
were founders of Symbolics. Greenblatt was the principal founder of
LMI.
At the time Symbolics and LMI were founded, MIT licensed the existing
hardware and software to both companies, presumably on mutually
beneficial terms. There are two lisp machine companies rather than
one due to the random variability of the universe, which does not
include malice on the part of anyone.
[Editor's note: since the relative merits of Symbolics and LMI as
manufacturers of Lisp machines and as true heirs to the "MIT Lisp
Machine" have little to do with editing, I will take the liberty of
censoring further comments on this subject.
/jq ]
dae...@ucbvax.uucp
Date: 6 Sep 1983 0616-EDT
From: RMS%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC
The MIT system, which LMI uses, has several improvements relating to
the editor. For example, Ztop and the Lisp (Edit) window really work,
and provide all the session management facilities that Dyer describes.
This just isn't true, except for a limited number of subsystems that
can be run in any window. Z succeeds because all the subsystems that
it is concerned with CAN be. However, I think part of the complaint
was that so much of the Lisp Machine environment could not be unified
by such an interface.
I agree with the rest of what you say about Zmacs/Emacs vs Z.
dae...@ucbvax.uucp
I stand by the statement that Dyer's session management complaints,
as I understand them, are solved in the MIT Lisp machine system.
It is true that operations on weird windows is not included in this.
How could one, for example, yank back a menu mouse click and edit it?
But insofar as the Lisp machine system has commands, they are
things you can type at a Lisp listener; and these and their output
can be edited and reinput using the Lisp (Edit) window which
Symbolics chose to flush and I chose to fix instead.
[Editor's note: for the benefit of the general reader (e.g. me)
could someone state the RWK/RMS debate more precisely? It seems to
me that they differ in their conceptualization of the purpose of a
display, with RMS asserting that it is multi-purpose, with several
"modes" of output -- representations of text, status messages, etc.,
while RWK and Dyer wish to treat characters on the display
modelessly. Is there in fact a naatural typology of display
uses? /jq ]