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Annotation of src/usr.bin/mg/README, Revision 1.13

1.7       tedu        1: [This is an edited version of the original mg README, updated slightly to
                      2: reflect changes in the last 20 years.]
                      3:
1.1       deraadt     4:
                      5: Mg (mg) is a Public Domain EMACS style editor.  It is "broadly"
                      6: compatible with GNU Emacs, the latest creation of Richard M.
                      7: Stallman, Chief GNUisance and inventor of Emacs.  GNU Emacs (and other
                      8: portions of GNU as they are released) are essentially free, (there are
                      9: handling charges for obtaining it) and so is Mg.  You may never have
                     10: to learn another editor.  (But probably will, at least long enough to
                     11: port Mg...)  Mg was formerly named MicroGnuEmacs, the name change was
1.3       mickey     12: done at the request of Richard Stallman.
1.1       deraadt    13:
1.13    ! bcallah    14: Mg is not associated with the GNU project, and it does not have the
        !            15: copyright restrictions present in GNU Emacs.  (However, some modules
        !            16: do have copyright notices.)  The Mg authors individually may or may
        !            17: not agree with the opinions expressed by Richard Stallman in "The GNU
1.1       deraadt    18: Manifesto".
                     19:
                     20: This program is intended to be a small, fast, and portable editor for
1.2       millert    21: people who can't (or don't want to) run real Emacs for one reason
                     22: or another.  It is compatible with GNU because there shouldn't be
1.7       tedu       23: any reason to learn more than one Emacs flavor.
                     24:
                     25:
1.1       deraadt    26: Beyond the work of Dave Conroy, author of the original public domain
                     27: v30, the current version contains the work of:
                     28:
                     29:        blarson@ecla.usc.edu            Bob Larson
                     30:        mic@emx.utexas.edu              Mic Kaczmarczik
                     31:        mwm@violet.berkeley.edu         Mike Meyer
                     32:        sandra@cs.utah.edu              Sandra Loosemore
                     33:        mp1u+@andrew.cmu.edu            Michael Portuesi
                     34:        RCKG01M@CALSTATE.BITNET         Stephen Walton
                     35:        hakanson@mist.cs.orst.edu       Marion Hakanson
                     36:
1.4       mickey     37: People who have worked on previous versions of Mg:
1.1       deraadt    38:
                     39:        rtech!daveb@sun.com             Dave Brower
                     40:
1.10      lum        41: Early release history:
                     42:
                     43: * Nov 16, 1986: First release to mod.sources
                     44: * Mar 3, 1987: First Release (mg1a) via comp.sources.unix
                     45: * May 26, 1988: Second release: (mg2a) via comp.sources.misc
                     46: * Jan 26, 1992: Linux port released by Charles Hedrick. This version
                     47:   later makes its way onto tsx-11, Infomagic, and various other Linux
                     48:   repositories.
                     49: * Feb 25, 2000: First import into the OpenBSD tree, where it is
                     50:   currently maintained with contributions from many others.
1.1       deraadt    51:
                     52: ----------------------------------------------------------------------
                     53:
1.5       db         54: Known limitations:
1.1       deraadt    55:
                     56: Recursive bindings may cause help and key rebinding code to go into
                     57: an infinite loop, aborting with a stack overflow.
                     58:
                     59: Overwrite mode does not work in macros.         (Characters are inserted
                     60: rather than overwriting.)
                     61:
                     62: Dired mode has some problems:  Rename does not update the buffer.
                     63: Doing a dired again will update the buffer (whether it needs it or
                     64: not) and will lose any marks for deletion.  .. and . are not
                     65: recognized as special cases.
                     66:
                     67: On systems with 16 bit integers, the kill buffer cannot exceed 32767
                     68: bytes.
                     69:
1.9       lum        70: Unlike GNU Emacs, Mg's minibuffer isn't multi-line aware and hence
                     71: some commands like "shell-command-on-region" always pop up a buffer to
                     72: display output irrespective of output's size.
1.1       deraadt    73:
1.11      lum        74: While navigating source code using Mg's cscope commands, the cursor
                     75: is always at the match location rather than in *cscope* buffer. Mg uses
                     76: the same keybindings of GNU Emacs's xcscope package for it's cscope commands.
                     77: As Mg's keybindings are case-insensitive some of the commands don't have a
                     78: default keybinding.
                     79:
1.1       deraadt    80: New implementation oddities:
                     81:
                     82: insert and define-key are new commands corresponding to the mocklisp
1.8       lum        83: functions in GNU Emacs.         (Mg does not have non-command functions.)
1.1       deraadt    84: (Mg's insert will only insert one string.)
                     85:
                     86: The display wrap code does not work at all like that of GNU emacs.
                     87:
1.12      lum        88: Some commands that do not mimic emacs exactly don't have a "standard"
                     89: emacs name. For example 'backup-to-home-directory' is only a partial
                     90: implementation of emacs' range of commands that allow a user to
                     91: customise the backup file location. If a more complete implementation
                     92: were coded of these commands the non standard commands would probably
                     93: be removed.