Emacs: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 11:21, 13 July 2025

Emacs is a family of text editors.

Extensible multi-platform programmers' editor, uses a LISP subset as a macro and extension language. Very popular with certain types of *nix persons in particular and for a time in the 90s was the most commonly available text editor out there as far as porting to different operating systems was concerned, but interest in it has faded greatly in the last few years as editors and IDEs that take advantage of GUIs have become more powerful, the Emacs code has grown exponentially in size and the current developers of Emacs act more and more dogmatic and entrenched. This has come to a point where there is no longer a current version for OS/2 and unlikely that anyone is interested in updating it.

History

Please note capitalisation of name, EMACS is a class of editors with similar basic functions and UI, and alongside vi part of the "Catholic" branch of text editors also referred to as "West Coast Editors" or "West Coast Orthodox". Emacs on the other hand is a specific version originally developed by James Gosling in the early 80s that was a clone of Multics Emacs and released as a Public Domain software, that was later hijacked by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and released under their own licence. Specific features like the use of a LISP subset and the control regime are Emacs features that are taken directly from Multics Emacs and only show up in Emacs, its forks and other ME clones, but are by no means a feature of EMACS editors in general. The reason for using LISP as a macro language in Multics Emacs is really simple, it is the language it was written in.

OS/2 Implementations

Multics Emacs
Gosling Emacs
GNU Emacs
Epoch - derived from GNU Emacs 18
XEmacs

DOS Implementations

Demacs

Publications

Books

Craig A. Finseth: The Craft of Text Editing: Emacs for the Modern World - Springer 1991, ISBN 0-387-97616-7
Ralph Roberts; Mark Boyd: UNIX Desktop Guide to Emacs - Hayden Books 1992, ISBN 0-672-30171-7

Links

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-Extensible multi-platform programmers editor, uses a [[LISP]] subset as a macro and extension language. Very popular with certain types of *nix persons in particular and for a time in the 90's was the most commonly available text editor out there as far as porting to different operating systems was concerned, but interest in it has faded greatly in the last few years as editors and IDE's that take advantage of GUI's have become more powerful, the Emacs code has grown exponentially in size and the current developers of Emacs act more and more dogmatic and entrenched. This has come to a point where there is no longer a current version for OS/2 and unlikely that anyone is interested in updating it.
+'''Emacs''' is a family of text editors.
-Please note capitalisation of name, '''EMACS''' is a class of editors with similar basic functions and UI, and alongside [[vi]] part of the "Catholic" branch of text editors also referred to as "West Coast Editors" or "West Coast Orthodox". '''Emacs''' on the other hand is a specific version originally developed by James Gosling in the early 80's that was a clone of '''Multics Emacs''' and released as a [[Public Domain]] software, that was later hijacked by the [[GNU Foundation]] and released under their own license. Specific features like the use of a [[LISP]] subset and the control regime are Emacs features that are taken directly from Multics Emacs and only show up Emacs, its forks and other ME clones, but are by no means a feature of EMACS editors in general. The reason for using LISP as a macro language in Multics Emacs is really simple, it was written in LISP.
+Extensible multi-platform programmers' editor, uses a [[LISP]] subset as a macro and extension language. Very popular with certain types of *nix persons in particular and for a time in the 90s was the most commonly available text editor out there as far as porting to different operating systems was concerned, but interest in it has faded greatly in the last few years as editors and IDEs that take advantage of GUIs have become more powerful, the Emacs code has grown exponentially in size and the current developers of Emacs act more and more dogmatic and entrenched. This has come to a point where there is no longer a current version for OS/2 and unlikely that anyone is interested in updating it.
-==Version==
+==History==
-*'''Latest OS/2 version:''' [http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/h-search.php?sh=1&button=Search&key=emacs&stype=all&sort=type_name&dir=%2F v.20.6]
+Please note capitalisation of name, '''EMACS''' is a class of editors with similar basic functions and UI, and alongside [[vi]] part of the "Catholic" branch of text editors also referred to as "West Coast Editors" or "West Coast Orthodox". '''Emacs''' on the other hand is a specific version originally developed by James Gosling in the early 80s that was a clone of '''Multics Emacs''' and released as a [[Public Domain]] software, that was later hijacked by the [[Free Software Foundation]] (FSF) and released under their own licence. Specific features like the use of a [[LISP]] subset and the control regime are Emacs features that are taken directly from Multics Emacs and only show up in Emacs, its forks and other ME clones, but are by no means a feature of EMACS editors in general. The reason for using LISP as a macro language in Multics Emacs is really simple, it is the language it was written in.
-* Latest version: 24.4
-==Language Support==
+==OS/2 Implementations==
-* English - Built in.
+*Multics Emacs
+*Gosling Emacs
+*[[GNU Emacs]]
+*Epoch - derived from GNU Emacs 18
+*XEmacs
-==Syntax highlighting==
+==DOS Implementations==
-Emacs traditionally does not support syntax highlighting, so you had to write your own mode for that to happen (mode is GNU speak for a filter), the version available for OS/2 used an older method to make this happen so the tutorials on the net are not 100% applicable, but you can use the [[Modula-2]] mode listed in the links section below as a model for your own mode. It is not as difficult as it may seem at first.
+*Demacs
-==License==
+==Publications==
-* Open source, currently released under the [[GNU GPL v3 License]], older versions released under the [[GNU GPL v2 License]] and the original was in the [[Public Domain]].
+;Books
+* Craig A. Finseth: ''The Craft of Text Editing: Emacs for the Modern World'' - Springer 1991, ISBN 0-387-97616-7
+* Ralph Roberts; Mark Boyd: ''UNIX Desktop Guide to Emacs'' - Hayden Books 1992, ISBN 0-672-30171-7
 ==Links==
-* [http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ Emacs homepage]
+*https://www.emacswiki.org
-* [http://home.snafu.de/ohei/emacs/emacs206-os2.html Setup help for the OS/2 2.06 version] also helps with the set-up of non-USA locales etc. - By Oliver Heidelbach
+*https://www.jwz.org/doc/lemacs.html
-* ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/apps/editors/emacs (Emacs folder on Hobbes)
-* [ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/dev/modula/m2emacs.zip Modula-2 editing support for OS/2 Emacs]
-==Author==
+[[Category:Text editors]][[Category:Open Source Software]][[Category:Software written in C]]
-* James Gosling (Original author)
+[[Category:LISP]]
-* GNU Foundation (Current maintainer)
-* [[Jeremy Bowen]] (OS/2 port)
-[[Category:Tools]] [[Category:Text editors]]  [[Category:Open Source Software]] [[Category:Software written in C]] [[Category:MS Windows Tools]] [[Category:Linux Tools]] [[Category:Solaris Tools]] [[Category:AIX Tools]] [[Category:BSD Tools]] [[Category:Minix Tools]] [[Category:SGI Irix Tools]] [[Category:Digital Unix Tools]] [[Category:HPUX Tools]][[Category:MAC OSX Tools]] [[Category:MAC Finder Tools]] [[Category:Digital Unix Tools]] [[Category:Atari ST Tools]]