[Tutor] [OT] TECO and Emacs (Was: pair programming.)

[alan.gauld@bt.com]

> > > Richard M. Stallman did that, merging two existing TECO macro
> > > packages.  Gosling wrote the first implementation of Emacs in C.

Actually I definitely got one bit wrong. 
Gosling did do a C version slightly before Stallman's although 
I believe it wasn't much more than a crude interpreter for his 
TECO macros.  But at least it meant you could run EMACS without 
TECO being there... It also had a horrible version of Lisp as 
a macro language...

> > Gosling wrote his "Editing MACroS" package in TECO macro language. 

I don't think there's any dispute over this bit, other than 
whether they count as a real emacs - since you needed TECO 
installed to run them!

> > Stallman used it at MIT and wrote the first C/Lisp emacs vesion. 

This is the bit I got wrong, see above.

> Have you got any web pages or other references supporting your
> version?  

The Unipress documentation has an appendix giving their version 
of events. Having checked their web page they don't seem to 
support emacs any more and have removed all the online docs :-(
(Shame they didn't think to release the source as open!)
In fact they seem to only sell one single product now, shame 
because they used to do a range of interesting software tools...

I also have a copy of an old HP emacs manual (1986) which summarises 
the Unipress version of things. (I think HP/Ux licensed Unipress 
emacs for a while, but I'm not sure - I never used HP/Ux back then...)

> the other hand, I found several supporting mine:
> http://www.jwz.org/doc/emacs-timeline.html
> http://www.abc.se/~jp/articles/computer/editor/emacshis.txt
> http://www.lysator.liu.se/history/garb/txt/87-1-emacs.txt
> http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?CategoryHistory

The problem is these are all from the GNU/Opensource pespective
wherein Gosling has been demonised(*) because he sold out to a 
commercial company(Unipress). It's actually hard to get a Gosling 
sympathetic perspective anywhere on the web!

One source I do still have is my very first Unix tutorial:
Unix For Users, published 1984. It says under 'other editors':
-----------
"emacs

emacs is a very advanced screen editor, due to James Gosling, 
it is considerably more powerful than vi, offering a split 
screen facility to permit editing of more than one file 
simultaneously. You may find it available ogn systems other 
than unix."
------------

Hardly definitive I know but significantly in a 1984 context 
credit was ascribed exclusively to Gosling and Stallman doesn't 
even warrant a mention!

Equally the official GNU camp have a very different view. A search 
on Google groups will show that debates over the origin of emacs 
and the relative roles of Gosling vv Stallman have been raging 
almost since emacs began! :-)

History is a variable not a constant! :-)

> But as I was -4 years old in 1976, I obviously don't have any
> first-hand information.  I might well be wrong.

I was using computers by then but didn't hit emacs until 1988.
(I hit teco in 1986 - ouch!)

Alan g.
Author of the 'Learning to Program' web site
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld

(*) 
Example of Stallman's view of Gosling is his comment at a conference:
"Then he stabbed everyone in the back by putting copyrights on it, making 
people promise not to redistribute it and then selling it to a
software-house. 
My later dealings with him personally showed that he was every bit as 
cowardly and despicable as you would expect from that history." 
No bias there then...