Annotation of src/usr.bin/mg/README, Revision 1.1
1.1 ! deraadt 1: Mg 2a README May 15, 1988
! 2:
! 3: Mg (mg) is a Public Domain EMACS style editor. It is "broadly"
! 4: compatible with GNU Emacs, the latest creation of Richard M.
! 5: Stallman, Chief GNUisance and inventor of Emacs. GNU Emacs (and other
! 6: portions of GNU as they are released) are essentially free, (there are
! 7: handling charges for obtaining it) and so is Mg. You may never have
! 8: to learn another editor. (But probably will, at least long enough to
! 9: port Mg...) Mg was formerly named MicroGnuEmacs, the name change was
! 10: done at the request of Richard Stallman.
! 11:
! 12: Mg is not associated with the GNU project, and most of it does not
! 13: have the copyright restrictions present in GNU Emacs. (However, some
! 14: of the system dependent modules and the regular expression module do
! 15: have copyright notices, specificly the VMS/primos termcap routines and
! 16: the amiga specific routines. Look at the source code for exact
! 17: copyright restrictions.) The Mg authors individually may or may not
! 18: agree with the opinions expressed by Richard Stallman in "The GNU
! 19: Manifesto".
! 20:
! 21: To avoid GNU copyright restrictions, replace the re_search.c, regex.h
! 22: and regex.c files with empty files.
! 23:
! 24: Documentation of Mg is in the TeX file mg.tex. This should be
! 25: formatted with the TeX text formatter and printed. A start twords a mg
! 26: programmers guied in in mgprog.doc, and some of the changes from 1b
! 27: are mentioned briefly in mg2a.change.
! 28:
! 29: This program is intended to be a small, fast, and portable editor for
! 30: people who can't (or don't want to) run real Emacs thing for one
! 31: reason or another. It is compatible with GNU because there shouldn't
! 32: be any reason to learn more than one Emacs flavor. We have excised
! 33: most MicroEMACS features that were incompatible with the big brother,
! 34: and added missing features that seemed essential.
! 35:
! 36: There are at least two other major versions of MicroEMACS in
! 37: circulation. One comes from Daniel Lawrence, (based on an old version
! 38: from Dave Conroy) and is several versions have been posted to usenet.
! 39: It uses a 3.x version numbering scheme, and the latest I know about is
! 40: 3.9i. It has some features not found in Mg, missing others, is
! 41: bigger, and is incompatible with GNU Emacs. It might be a better
! 42: choice for you if you *must* have something not present here and can't
! 43: run GNU.
! 44:
! 45: Another variety uses a different numbering scheme, and is up to v30.
! 46: This also comes from mod.sources, and is the latest version from the
! 47: original MicroEMACS author Dave Conroy. Mg is derived from this
! 48: version, and for the most part has replaced it.
! 49:
! 50: Mg is continuing to diverge from other MicroEmacs varients.
! 51: Significant modifacations would me nessisary to adapt code from either
! 52: the 3.x strains or v30. Command functions and key mapping, for
! 53: instance, are completely different.
! 54:
! 55: This is the third distribution release of Mg. (It went through four
! 56: beta releases to iron out the changes made by the various authors.)
! 57: Prior releases were known as MicroGnuEmacs 1a and MicroGnuEmacs 1b.
! 58: Beyond the work of Dave Conroy, author of the original public domain
! 59: v30, the current version contains the work of:
! 60:
! 61: blarson@ecla.usc.edu Bob Larson
! 62: mic@emx.utexas.edu Mic Kaczmarczik
! 63: mwm@violet.berkeley.edu Mike Meyer
! 64: sandra@cs.utah.edu Sandra Loosemore
! 65: mp1u+@andrew.cmu.edu Michael Portuesi
! 66: RCKG01M@CALSTATE.BITNET Stephen Walton
! 67: hakanson@mist.cs.orst.edu Marion Hakanson
! 68:
! 69: People who have worked on previos versions of Mg:
! 70:
! 71: rtech!daveb@sun.com Dave Brower
! 72:
! 73: These systems are known to work in the current version:
! 74:
! 75: 4.2 & 4.3 BSD Unix, SunOs 3.2, Ultrix-32
! 76: System V
! 77: OS9/68k
! 78: VMS
! 79: Amiga
! 80: Primos
! 81: Atari ST
! 82:
! 83: Ms-Dos support is planned, but did not get done in time for this
! 84: release. (Jeff Siegal <jbs@eddie.mit.edu> was the one doing it.)
! 85: The Ms-Dos files will probably be distributed seperatly when it
! 86: becomes available.
! 87:
! 88: Cpm/68k support was dropped due to compiler bugs. Eunice support was
! 89: dropped because of lack of interest. Mg 1b does support those
! 90: systems.
! 91:
! 92: One change to late to make it into mg.tex is readding bsmap-mode (only
! 93: if BSMAP is #defined when compiling). This is a toggle that controls
! 94: input mapping to exchange the ^H (backspace) and DEL characters. Like
! 95: GNU emacs input keymaps, it is not displayed on the mode line and will
! 96: cause them to be treated as each other for echoing. (With bsmap-mode
! 97: enabled, DEL will echo ^H in the echo line.)
! 98:
! 99:
! 100: How to Make a Mg
! 101: ---------------------------
! 102:
! 103: On UNIX at least, it's easy. (Note that even on these systems you may
! 104: want to change a compile time option.) If you have BSD UNIX, do:
! 105:
! 106: ln sys/bsd/Makefile .
! 107: make
! 108:
! 109: For System V, do:
! 110:
! 111: ln sys/sysv/Makefile .
! 112: make
! 113:
! 114: There are several other directories under sys: osk, vms, amiga, atari,
! 115: prime. You should follow the directions contained therein to make one
! 116: of those versions.
! 117:
! 118: For most systems (everyting except the amiga, and atari currently),
! 119: the termcap terminal definition is used. There is a readme file in
! 120: the default subdirectory of the sys directory explaining what entries
! 121: are used and how. (Termcap is a way to do display manipulation in a
! 122: terminal independent manner.) Besides the normal startup file (usually
! 123: .mg) terminal specific initialization files may be used. (For
! 124: example, in .mg.vt100 you may want to (global-set-key "\e[A"
! 125: 'previous-line) to have the up arrow key work.)
! 126:
! 127: Some changes made to make this version more like Gnu Emacs may break
! 128: startup files. Gnu Emacs 18 has both backward-delete-char and
! 129: delete-backward-char that apperently do the same thing. This version
! 130: has only the latter because that is what is documented in my manual
! 131: (version 17) and bound by Gnu Emacs to DEL.
! 132:
! 133: ----------------------------------------------------------------------
! 134:
! 135: Known limitaions:
! 136:
! 137: Recursive bindings may cause help and key rebinding code to go into
! 138: an infinite loop, aborting with a stack overflow.
! 139:
! 140: Overwrite mode does not work in macros. (Characters are inserted
! 141: rather than overwriting.)
! 142:
! 143: Dired mode has some problems: Rename does not update the buffer.
! 144: Doing a dired again will update the buffer (whether it needs it or
! 145: not) and will lose any marks for deletion. .. and . are not
! 146: recognized as special cases.
! 147:
! 148: On systems with 16 bit integers, the kill buffer cannot exceed 32767
! 149: bytes.
! 150:
! 151:
! 152:
! 153: New implementation oddities:
! 154:
! 155: insert and define-key are new commands corresponding to the mocklisp
! 156: functions in Gnu Emacs. (Mg does not have non-command functions.)
! 157: (Mg's insert will only insert one string.)
! 158:
! 159: The display wrap code does not work at all like that of GNU emacs.
! 160:
! 161: ------------------------------------------------------------------------
! 162:
! 163: If you have a change to make that you think should be incorporated
! 164: into the next version of Mg, send it the mg-support mail
! 165: list. Addresses are:
! 166:
! 167: mg-support%ais1@ecla.usc.edu
! 168: {cit-vax,sdcrdcf,trwrb}!oberon!ais1!mg-support
! 169:
! 170: Support for additional systems and terminals should include being
! 171: available for beta testing as other changes are made. (Send a short
! 172: note to mg-support.) Currently, beta test copies of Mg are made
! 173: available via Internet ftp, so beta testers need access to the
! 174: Internet. (UUCP sites that are customers of uunet can get it via
! 175: them. Contact uunet!uunet-request for details.) If you can't reach
! 176: one of us via a computer network, I suppose you could send a change to
! 177: my snail mail address below on 5" os9 format disks or 9 track tape
! 178: (ANSI variable label or Prime magsav format), but this effectivly
! 179: rules you out as a potential beta tester. (Don't expect the disk or
! 180: tape back unless you inculude a SASE with sufficent postage.) I will
! 181: not be sending out copies on magnetic media, so please don't ask. If
! 182: you somehow got an incomplete or non-standard copy, (i.e. missing one
! 183: of the sys directories mentioned here as working) complain to who you
! 184: got it from not to me.
! 185:
! 186: Robert Larson
! 187: 309 S. Alexandria Ave.
! 188: Apt. 117
! 189: Los Angeles, CA 90020
! 190:
! 191: Alternatively, and under the same conditions, you can send either a 3"
! 192: AmigaDOS format disk or a 9 track tape (Unix tar format) to:
! 193:
! 194: Mike Meyer
! 195: P.O. Box 4730
! 196: Berkeley, CA 94704
! 197:
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