I've watched (some time ago) the two parts of James Gosling Oral History
for the Computer History Museum. IIRC, he accuses Richard Stallman of
plagiarism at some point in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ6XHroNewc

I'm going to watch it all over to find out exactly what he said and I'll
post it here. I wonder if someone, however, remembers at what point in
the video he does say it. I also wonder if anyone has any verifiable
facts to share regarding the dispute. Thank you.

On Wed, 3 Apr 2024, Johanne Fairchild wrote:

> I've watched (some time ago) the two parts of James Gosling Oral History
> for the Computer History Museum. IIRC, he accuses Richard Stallman of
> plagiarism at some point in
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ6XHroNewc
>
> I'm going to watch it all over to find out exactly what he said and I'll
> post it here. I wonder if someone, however, remembers at what point in
> the video he does say it. I also wonder if anyone has any verifiable
> facts to share regarding the dispute. Thank you.
>

Please do. Sounds like a very interesting claim!

On 2024-04-03 18:55, Johanne Fairchild wrote:
> I've watched (some time ago) the two parts of James Gosling Oral History
> for the Computer History Museum. IIRC, he accuses Richard Stallman of
> plagiarism at some point in
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ6XHroNewc
>
> I'm going to watch it all over to find out exactly what he said and I'll
> post it here. I wonder if someone, however, remembers at what point in
> the video he does say it. I also wonder if anyone has any verifiable
> facts to share regarding the dispute. Thank you.

Some commentary here:
https://www.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2017-February/010194.html

OF

On Thu, 4 Apr 2024, OrangeFish wrote:

> On 2024-04-03 18:55, Johanne Fairchild wrote:
>> I've watched (some time ago) the two parts of James Gosling Oral History
>> for the Computer History Museum. IIRC, he accuses Richard Stallman of
>> plagiarism at some point in
>>
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ6XHroNewc
>>
>> I'm going to watch it all over to find out exactly what he said and I'll
>> post it here. I wonder if someone, however, remembers at what point in
>> the video he does say it. I also wonder if anyone has any verifiable
>> facts to share regarding the dispute. Thank you.
>
> Some commentary here:
> https://www.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2017-February/010194.html
>
> OF
>

Oh, seems quite trivial. Not at all what I expected. Slightly related,
what's the gold standard for a minimalist Emacs? I'm a vim-man myself, but
every couple of years I get an itch to check it out, recoil and the
enormous size of standard emacs, try and look for something sane/smaller,
and then go back to vim. Any new contenders out there I should check out?

According to D <nospam@example.net>:
>Oh, seems quite trivial. Not at all what I expected. Slightly related,
>what's the gold standard for a minimalist Emacs? I'm a vim-man myself, but
>every couple of years I get an itch to check it out, recoil and the
>enormous size of standard emacs, try and look for something sane/smaller,
>and then go back to vim. Any new contenders out there I should check out?

It's not exactly new, but there's a commercial version of Emacs called
Epsilon that I have been using since the 1980s (that's not a typo.) It
is small and fast because it is written in C. Its extension language
eel looks a lot like C. It costs money and is totally worth it. I
originally used it on MS-DOS, now on FreeBSD, Linux, and MacOS.

You can find free evaluation versions (fully functional, time limited) here https://www.lugaru.com/

R's,
John
--
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

On Thu, 4 Apr 2024 19:04:21 +0200
D <nospam@example.net> wrote:

> Oh, seems quite trivial. Not at all what I expected. Slightly related,
> what's the gold standard for a minimalist Emacs? I'm a vim-man myself,
> but every couple of years I get an itch to check it out, recoil and the
> enormous size of standard emacs, try and look for something sane/smaller,
> and then go back to vim. Any new contenders out there I should check out?

There's a thing called neovim that some speak highly of - I've yet
to try it myself.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
For forms of government let fools contest
Whate're is best administered is best - Alexander Pope

On 2024-04-04, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Apr 2024 19:04:21 +0200
> D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
>
>> Oh, seems quite trivial. Not at all what I expected. Slightly related,
>> what's the gold standard for a minimalist Emacs? I'm a vim-man myself,
>> but every couple of years I get an itch to check it out, recoil and the
>> enormous size of standard emacs, try and look for something sane/smaller,
>> and then go back to vim. Any new contenders out there I should check out?
>
> There's a thing called neovim that some speak highly of - I've yet
> to try it myself.
>

There was an emacs for slackware that was very good,forget what it was
called. Every now and again I have the urge to install slackware, but
debian, afaik it is more up yo date, and then, again I remember, there
was something previous to Stallman, (microemacs)

--
greymausg@mail.com
Come Back Boris, all is forgiven,
Oh, drat, he has.

On Thu, 4 Apr 2024 19:04:21 +0200, D wrote:

> ... recoil and the enormous size of standard emacs ...

Let’s face it: “Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping” just isn’t that
big a deal any more.

The nice thing with Emacs is, you can start using it right out of the box,
and grow from there. Make sure to install the documentation package (this
is separated out on Debian derivatives because the GNU “Free”
Documentation License isn’t really considered free), and remember that the
entire help system is accessible from CTRL/H (or F1, if you prefer).

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
>On Thu, 4 Apr 2024 19:04:21 +0200, D wrote:
>
>> ... recoil and the enormous size of standard emacs ...
>
>Let’s face it: “Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping” just isn’t that
>big a deal any more.
>
>The nice thing with Emacs is, you can start using it right out of the box,

The nice thing with vim is that you can start using it right out of the box.

In article <c833ea6a-b602-422a-1908-c935f339d2c5@example.net>,
D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
>
>
>On Thu, 4 Apr 2024, OrangeFish wrote:
>
>> On 2024-04-03 18:55, Johanne Fairchild wrote:
>>> I've watched (some time ago) the two parts of James Gosling Oral History
>>> for the Computer History Museum. IIRC, he accuses Richard Stallman of
>>> plagiarism at some point in
>>>
>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ6XHroNewc
>>>
>>> I'm going to watch it all over to find out exactly what he said and I'll
>>> post it here. I wonder if someone, however, remembers at what point in
>>> the video he does say it. I also wonder if anyone has any verifiable
>>> facts to share regarding the dispute. Thank you.
>>
>> Some commentary here:
>> https://www.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2017-February/010194.html
>
>Oh, seems quite trivial. Not at all what I expected.

That's not exactly what happened. Stallman basically
took Gosling's code and slapped his own copyright notices
on it; he did eventually excise all of it, but it was
definitely poor form to start.

>Slightly related, what's the gold standard for a
>minimalist Emacs?

Some folks speak highly of `mg`, which is very small.

- Dan C.

On Fri, 05 Apr 2024 00:08:44 GMT, Scott Lurndal wrote:

> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
>>On Thu, 4 Apr 2024 19:04:21 +0200, D wrote:
>>
>>> ... recoil and the enormous size of standard emacs ...
>>
>>Let’s face it: “Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping” just isn’t that
>>big a deal any more.
>>
>>The nice thing with Emacs is, you can start using it right out of the
>>box,
>
> The nice thing with vim is that you can start using it right out of the
> box.

That’s very nice. Just like a proper editor.

> Oh, seems quite trivial. Not at all what I expected. Slightly related,
> what's the gold standard for a minimalist Emacs? I'm a vim-man myself, but
> every couple of years I get an itch to check it out, recoil and the
> enormous size of standard emacs, try and look for something sane/smaller,
> and then go back to vim. Any new contenders out there I should check out?

Thoughts:

1. Current GNU emacs is only 2-3 times the size of vim.

2. Emacs is more than just an editor, it's really intended to be an
IDE, a complete working environment and a platform for building all
sorts of tools, including file management, email, calendar, task lists
and notes, and many other things.

3. Vim is more than just an editor, much like the above.

De

On Fri, 05 Apr 2024 01:53:59 +0000, Dennis Boone wrote:

> 2. Emacs is more than just an editor, it's really intended to be an
> IDE, a complete working environment and a platform for building all
> sorts of tools, including file management, email, calendar, task lists
> and notes, and many other things.

I wouldn’t call Emacs an “IDE”. An “IDE” is something that mandates its
own build toolchain, like Microsoft Visual Studio or Apple XCode do. Emacs
can work with any build toolchain.

Maybe call it an “orchestration platform”.

> 3. Vim is more than just an editor, much like the above.

Vim is still a text editor, though. Emacs is an editor.

On Thu, 4 Apr 2024, John Levine wrote:

> According to D <nospam@example.net>:
>> Oh, seems quite trivial. Not at all what I expected. Slightly related,
>> what's the gold standard for a minimalist Emacs? I'm a vim-man myself, but
>> every couple of years I get an itch to check it out, recoil and the
>> enormous size of standard emacs, try and look for something sane/smaller,
>> and then go back to vim. Any new contenders out there I should check out?
>
> It's not exactly new, but there's a commercial version of Emacs called
> Epsilon that I have been using since the 1980s (that's not a typo.) It
> is small and fast because it is written in C. Its extension language
> eel looks a lot like C. It costs money and is totally worth it. I
> originally used it on MS-DOS, now on FreeBSD, Linux, and MacOS.
>
> You can find free evaluation versions (fully functional, time limited) here https://www.lugaru.com/
>
> R's,
> John
>
Thank you very much John, will definitely have a look!

On Thu, 4 Apr 2024, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:

> On Thu, 4 Apr 2024 19:04:21 +0200
> D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
>
>> Oh, seems quite trivial. Not at all what I expected. Slightly related,
>> what's the gold standard for a minimalist Emacs? I'm a vim-man myself,
>> but every couple of years I get an itch to check it out, recoil and the
>> enormous size of standard emacs, try and look for something sane/smaller,
>> and then go back to vim. Any new contenders out there I should check out?
>
> There's a thing called neovim that some speak highly of - I've yet
> to try it myself.

I've used vim for more than 2 decades and consider myself a power user,
but when it comes to vim vs neovim I'm not a power-power user, so for me
the difference is minimal. I now use neovim because it removed lots of old
code and support from the original vim and I wanted to "push" the vim
project to keep up, and now I'm stuck on neovim, but for my extremely
simple use cases (mostly day to day writing and system administration
with a little bit of scripting thrown in) no difference at all.

On Thu, 4 Apr 2024, greymaus wrote:

> On 2024-04-04, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
>> On Thu, 4 Apr 2024 19:04:21 +0200
>> D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Oh, seems quite trivial. Not at all what I expected. Slightly related,
>>> what's the gold standard for a minimalist Emacs? I'm a vim-man myself,
>>> but every couple of years I get an itch to check it out, recoil and the
>>> enormous size of standard emacs, try and look for something sane/smaller,
>>> and then go back to vim. Any new contenders out there I should check out?
>>
>> There's a thing called neovim that some speak highly of - I've yet
>> to try it myself.
>>
>
> There was an emacs for slackware that was very good,forget what it was
> called. Every now and again I have the urge to install slackware, but
> debian, afaik it is more up yo date, and then, again I remember, there
> was something previous to Stallman, (microemacs)

Slckware is one of my options to evaluate if my current distribution,
opensuse, should ever go with containers and r/o root. My list of options
to flee to would be alpine linux, slackware or freebsd.

I'm also fascinated by nixos, but I doubt I have the energy to learn an
entire language with too many decades invested in regular linux, but the
concept is nice and perhaps it might become a new standard for younglings?

On Thu, 4 Apr 2024, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> On Thu, 4 Apr 2024 19:04:21 +0200, D wrote:
>
>> ... recoil and the enormous size of standard emacs ...
>
> Let’s face it: “Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping” just isn’t that
> big a deal any more.
>
> The nice thing with Emacs is, you can start using it right out of the box,
> and grow from there. Make sure to install the documentation package (this
> is separated out on Debian derivatives because the GNU “Free”
> Documentation License isn’t really considered free), and remember that the
> entire help system is accessible from CTRL/H (or F1, if you prefer).

Same with vim. Since I like the unix philosophy I like ideally to have one
tool that does one thing well. I'd rather combine several commands, than
have one big program that does all.

In terms of vim I don't use any extensions but use it more or less out of
the box since I was more of an operations guy than a developer.

On Fri, 5 Apr 2024, Scott Lurndal wrote:

> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
>> On Thu, 4 Apr 2024 19:04:21 +0200, D wrote:
>>
>>> ... recoil and the enormous size of standard emacs ...
>>
>> Let???s face it: ???Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping??? just isn???t that
>> big a deal any more.
>>
>> The nice thing with Emacs is, you can start using it right out of the box,
>
> The nice thing with vim is that you can start using it right out of the box.
>
Haha, touché! ;)

On Fri, 5 Apr 2024, Dan Cross wrote:

> In article <c833ea6a-b602-422a-1908-c935f339d2c5@example.net>,
> D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Thu, 4 Apr 2024, OrangeFish wrote:
>>
>>> On 2024-04-03 18:55, Johanne Fairchild wrote:
>>>> I've watched (some time ago) the two parts of James Gosling Oral History
>>>> for the Computer History Museum. IIRC, he accuses Richard Stallman of
>>>> plagiarism at some point in
>>>>
>>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ6XHroNewc
>>>>
>>>> I'm going to watch it all over to find out exactly what he said and I'll
>>>> post it here. I wonder if someone, however, remembers at what point in
>>>> the video he does say it. I also wonder if anyone has any verifiable
>>>> facts to share regarding the dispute. Thank you.
>>>
>>> Some commentary here:
>>> https://www.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2017-February/010194.html
>>
>> Oh, seems quite trivial. Not at all what I expected.
>
> That's not exactly what happened. Stallman basically
> took Gosling's code and slapped his own copyright notices
> on it; he did eventually excise all of it, but it was
> definitely poor form to start.
>
>> Slightly related, what's the gold standard for a
>> minimalist Emacs?
>
> Some folks speak highly of `mg`, which is very small.
>
> - Dan C.
>
>
Thank you Dan, mg added to the list to check out as well.

D <nospam@example.net> writes:

> On Thu, 4 Apr 2024, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 4 Apr 2024 19:04:21 +0200, D wrote:
>>
>>> ... recoil and the enormous size of standard emacs ...
>>
>> Let’s face it: “Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping” just isn’t that
>> big a deal any more.
>>
>> The nice thing with Emacs is, you can start using it right out of the box,
>> and grow from there. Make sure to install the documentation package (this
>> is separated out on Debian derivatives because the GNU “Free”
>> Documentation License isn’t really considered free), and remember that the
>> entire help system is accessible from CTRL/H (or F1, if you prefer).
>
> Same with vim. Since I like the unix philosophy I like ideally to have
> one tool that does one thing well. I'd rather combine several
> commands, than have one big program that does all.
>
> In terms of vim I don't use any extensions but use it more or less out
> of the box since I was more of an operations guy than a developer.

I think people get too hung up on "the unix philosophy" sometimes. I've
been using Unix and Unix-adjacent systems for over twenty years: Linux,
various BSDs, Solaris, Plan 9. At various times I've used emacs, vi,
acme, and sam as my primary editors. The main thing I think of anymore
when somebody starts talking about "the unix philosophy" is that nobody
dares to put a `find` program in Plan 9 because it's too GNU-ish, so we
all typed `du -a | grep <filename>` and scolded any newbie who dared
post on the mailing list asking for find.

Anyway, is there such a huge difference between "foo < xyz | bar | baz"
and "(baz (bar (foo xyz)))"? In both cases you're invoking little bits
of code, feeding the output of one to another, and it can be just as
interactive in emacs as in a shell. Does it make such a difference if
you type :s/foo/bar/g or M-x replace-regexp RET foo RET bar, aside from
a couple more keystrokes in the latter? (but not many, thanks to
tab-complete)

After years away, I've been exploring emacs again and there's a lot to
love in there. In some ways it doesn't feel super Unixy, sure, and
there's good reason for that: it grew up on a lot of non-Unix systems
first. But Unix isn't the ultimate evolution of the operating system,
and Emacs is basically the most coherent vision for a self-contained
environment which is as flexible/extensible as Unix. It's a spiritual
successor in some ways to the Lisp machines, where everything is just
*there* for inspection and evaluation and modification.

I think anybody who's interested in computing, and especially in
computer folklore, owes it to themselves to try using Emacs. It's cool
to come away from that attempt disliking it, but it's such a weird and
wild and interesting *thing*. Don't forget to run M-x list-packages and
see all the stuff people have built on top of this weirdly archaic
single-threaded lisp system.

john

p.s. try acme too, it's totally different but also a lot of fun.

On Fri, 05 Apr 2024 00:08:44 GMT, scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal)
wrote:
>Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
>>On Thu, 4 Apr 2024 19:04:21 +0200, D wrote:
>>
>>> ... recoil and the enormous size of standard emacs ...
>>
>>Let’s face it: “Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swappingâ€? just isn’t that
>>big a deal any more.
>>
>>The nice thing with Emacs is, you can start using it right out of the box,
>
>The nice thing with vim is that you can start using it right out of the box.

I start using EditPad Lite 8 right out of the box.
--
Jim

On 2024-04-05, Dennis Boone <drb@ihatespam.msu.edu> wrote:

>> Oh, seems quite trivial. Not at all what I expected. Slightly related,
>> what's the gold standard for a minimalist Emacs? I'm a vim-man myself, but
>> every couple of years I get an itch to check it out, recoil and the
>> enormous size of standard emacs, try and look for something sane/smaller,
>> and then go back to vim. Any new contenders out there I should check out?
>
> Thoughts:
>
> 1. Current GNU emacs is only 2-3 times the size of vim.
>
> 2. Emacs is more than just an editor, it's really intended to be an
> IDE, a complete working environment and a platform for building all
> sorts of tools, including file management, email, calendar, task lists
> and notes, and many other things.

As the old saying goes, it's a nice place to live, but I wouldn't
want to visit there.

> 3. Vim is more than just an editor, much like the above.

My fingers speak vim, to the point where if I'm using a different
editor I'll often see a string of Js appear on the screen when
I'm trying to move down.

I did try emacs a couple of times, but its mindset is just
too foreign for me.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | The Internet is like a big city:
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | it has plenty of bright lights and
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | excitement, but also dark alleys
/ \ if you read it the right way. | down which the unwary get mugged.

On 2024-04-05, D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
> This message is in MIME format. The first part should be readable text,
> while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools.
>
> --8323328-574512632-1712329460=:10296
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT
>
>
>
> On Thu, 4 Apr 2024, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 4 Apr 2024 19:04:21 +0200, D wrote:
>>
>>> ... recoil and the enormous size of standard emacs ...
>>
>> Let’s face it: “Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping” just isn’t that
>> big a deal any more.
>>
>> The nice thing with Emacs is, you can start using it right out of the box,
>> and grow from there. Make sure to install the documentation package (this
>> is separated out on Debian derivatives because the GNU “Free”
>> Documentation License isn’t really considered free), and remember that the
>> entire help system is accessible from CTRL/H (or F1, if you prefer).
>
> Same with vim. Since I like the unix philosophy I like ideally to have one
> tool that does one thing well. I'd rather combine several commands, than
> have one big program that does all.
>
> In terms of vim I don't use any extensions but use it more or less out of
> the box since I was more of an operations guy than a developer.
> --8323328-574512632-1712329460=:10296--

--
greymausg@mail.com
Come Back Boris, all is forgiven,
Oh, drat, he has.

John <john@building-m.simplistic-anti-spam-measure.net> writes:

> I think anybody who's interested in computing, and especially in
> computer folklore, owes it to themselves to try using Emacs. It's cool
> to come away from that attempt disliking it, but it's such a weird and
> wild and interesting *thing*. Don't forget to run M-x list-packages and
> see all the stuff people have built on top of this weirdly archaic
> single-threaded lisp system.

1989: On a visit to a friend at Project Athena, the plunked me in
front of (what was them) a powerful Unix work station with some
manuals for a (obviously pre-HTML) multimedia authoring system.
Default editor was Emacs. I was a CP/M power user and hated Emacs.
Walked across to Kendall Sq. and bought the hardcopy Emacs manual, read
it all. Came grudgingly to terms with Emacs.

Fast forward over 30 years. Included some period logging into Unix
systems using my Osborne I as a dial-up terminal. 1999 conversion to
Caldera Linux which defaulted to XEmacs and KDE. Quickly downloaded
GNU Emacs, soon switched to Slackware with twm and have never looked
back.

I now use Emacs for email, news, shell and file management,
occasionally for writing a bit of C, Perl or shell scripts. I would
be crippled without it.

Every time I upgrade my Slackware system, I install the most recent
Emacs and try it. After hours of unsuccessfully trying to fix or
eliminate features that I hate -- abandonment of RMAIL,
unreadable standout colors, mouse stuff -- I revert to 20.7.2 that I
compiled in 1999.

Yes, I do know a bit of Lisp, once wrote a simple-minded embodiment of
Ashby's "homeostat" in XLisp, but have only tweaked Emacs lisp a
couple of very elementary time. Brain too old, perhaps, to really
beat up Emacs Lisp.

--
Mike Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada

John <john@building-m.simplistic-anti-spam-measure.net> writes:
>D <nospam@example.net> writes:
>

>> Same with vim. Since I like the unix philosophy I like ideally to have
>> one tool that does one thing well. I'd rather combine several
>> commands, than have one big program that does all.
>>
>> In terms of vim I don't use any extensions but use it more or less out
>> of the box since I was more of an operations guy than a developer.
>
>I think people get too hung up on "the unix philosophy" sometimes. I've
>been using Unix and Unix-adjacent systems for over twenty years: Linux,
>various BSDs, Solaris, Plan 9. At various times I've used emacs, vi,
>acme, and sam as my primary editors. The main thing I think of anymore
>when somebody starts talking about "the unix philosophy" is that nobody
>dares to put a `find` program in Plan 9 because it's too GNU-ish, so we
>all typed `du -a | grep <filename>` and scolded any newbie who dared
>post on the mailing list asking for find.

Gnu-ish? find(1) predates GNU.

>I think anybody who's interested in computing, and especially in
>computer folklore, owes it to themselves to try using Emacs.

Been there, done that, went back to vim.