Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!warwick!expya!exsb.cs.exeter.ac.uk!jtr From: jtr@exsb.cs.exeter.ac.uk (Jason Trenouth) Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog Subject: GNU vrs UNIPRESS Message-ID: <500@expya.UUCP> Date: 31 May 88 11:08:40 GMT Sender: news@expya.UUCP Reply-To: jtr@exsb.cs.exeter.ac.uk (Jason Trenouth) Organization: Computer Science Dept. - University of Exeter. UK Lines: 87 Walter Maner writes: > We have the happy dilemma of deciding whether to use the excellent Unipress > EMACS which come bundled with Quintus Prolog or integrating the GNU EMACS, > already installed, with Quintus Prolog. Any observations of experiences > would be welcome. I suppose our preference is to interface with GNU if that > is easily accomplished without loss of functionality. and Martin Carroll replies: >> GNU GNU GNU GNU GNU GNU GNU >> >> I hate unipress. I've been through five stages of editor with Quintus Prolog. Initially I used the UNIPRESS Emacs that QP came with. Gradually I discovered that this was not the same as the GNU Emacs that the rest of the department used. The differences were mostly little irritations, but they were all with UNIPRESS. For a short while I used GNU Emacs, but I became frustrated by the lack of a handy rodent. Then I turned to the SPY editor (UK mouse-based editor). However, its impossible to run a Prolog subprocess through it sensibly, and I moved on to the Sun's own "textedit". This had the added advantage of having the same interface as the "mailtool" and "cmdtool" (for those who know what I'm talking about). Then the department began using the Sun-interfaced GNU Emacs and my troubles were over. Yessiree, I'm a BORN AGAIN GNU lover. CONS: No compile option. Quintus Prolog doesn't get tricked into believing the buffer is the original file (i.e. multifile warnings if you switch between buffer consults and normal consults). No help file interface. Some unsupported libraries effected (e.g. big_text). No find definition power (Ouch this hurts!), and not linked to debugger. Not supported. PROS GNU Emacs has an all-round better feel than UNIPRESS. Better integrated with a Sun workstation (if you got one!). If GNU Emacs is already widely used within your organisation, then so much the better for the Prolog user who doesn't need to change his editor to read any mail etc. (OK UNIPRESS can do other things but see below.) To keep two comparably full versions of Emacs around is an enourmous waste of disk space! What could happen (i.e. happened here) is that it was only possible to use a stunted version of UNIPRESS Emacs - thus making GNU Emacs infinitely better in any feature comparison. I gather that GNU is more powerful anyway (unconfirmed). Certainly, some hardware manufacturers (e.g. Pyramid) started supplying GNU in addition to UNIPRESS because their user-base prefers it. The only feature that I wished for was "find-definition". GNU Emacs has a more general/powerful "find-tag" feature. However, it relies on an associated program called ETAGS which currently only understands C, FORTRAN, LISP, and LATEX (text formatter). Rather than waiting for Richard Stallman's (Ohmmme) merry men to correct this deficiency I recently wrote PTAGS. This creates a TAG FILE from a Prolog file(s) that GNU Emacs can use to implement "find-tag" for Prolog. PTAGS is written in Prolog (~10K) and is sort of available after I check with our system admin about the proper place to post it. Ciaou (see I can spell it now), JT. "If the feel is against you then argue the features. If the features are against you then argue the feel. If they are both against you, call the other Emacs names." | Jason Trenouth, | JANET: jtr@uk.ac.exeter.cs | | Computer Science Department, | UUCP: jtr@expya.uucp | | University of Exeter, | BITNET: jtr%uk.ac.exeter.cs@ukacrl| | Devon, EX4 4PT, United Kingdom. | |