Learning Z vs Zmacs
dae...@ucbvax.uucp
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. Their p.r. speaks
as if they invented the Lisp machine and everything on it. This is
of course not true; the Lisp machine was invented by Greenblatt, who
founded LMI, and Lisp machines from LMI run a system that is mostly
the same as those from Symbolics.
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.
Many other features of Z that he mentions are also present in Zmacs,
and have been for ages. The main problem is that there is no document
that describes any of the features that Zmacs has but Emacs doesn't.
For example, it is quite possible to take characters out of the text
to put them into a command argument.
Cursor motion can always be done in Emacs with the four basic commands
forward/backward character/line, which are no more complicated than
the Z cursor commands. You don't need to memorize any more commands
than you do in Z (except that those other commands are useful).
The reason that these commands are not normally on arrow keys is that
1) some terminals don't have arrow keys and 2) the arrow keys have
problems. There is no place for them in the character set; they use
sequences which you could also get by typing legitimate sequences of
other keys. And these sequences are different on different
terminals.
On various particular terminal types, Emacs extensions exist to
redefine the arrow keys to do cursor motion, but it is always
terminal-dependent. In Zmacs it might be reasonable to make the
hand-up, etc., characters be those four commands. I guess no Lisp
machine hacker ever thought it mattered.
I would be driven to distraction if any random motion of the mouse
interfered with what I was doing, in any way whatever, when I was not
trying to use the mouse. I am glad that the mouse won't do anything
unless I click on it.