Fun with ersatz-emacs on NetBSD 3.0
===================================
Ersatz-Emacs: a Micro-Emacs
---------------------------
Ersatz-Emacs is a tiny Micro-Emacs.
Chris Baird created Ersatz-Emacs, starting with MicroEMACS 3.6 as
released to mod.sources and the Public Domain by Daniel Lawrence in
1986, and was itself based on the work of Steve Wilhite and George
Jones to MicroEMACS 2.0 (then also public domain) by Dave Conroy.
Chris Baird stripped out most of the features he personally never
used from 3.6, played with it for twelve years, completed the
key-bindings chart, and wrote a man-page. He called his version
"Ersatz-Emacs", referring to a well-known rant from Richard Stallman
in a memo,
The key-bindings chart, a handy overview of keybindings, is called
"ERSATZ.keys", and is dated on September 14th, 2000.
Ersatz-Emacs is a capable editor, with support for working on
multiple files, using multiple windows, and working with keyboard
macro's,
NetBSD 3.0
----------
I revived an old Arm board, which comes with NetBSD 3.0, and has
only a mininal set installed. This means that adding software can be
challenging.
Building Ersatz-Emacs on NetBSD 3.0, however, is a piece of cake.
I downloaded the tar-ball for Ersatz-Emacs on this system, unpacked
the tar-ball and ran 'make'. And behold, it compiled :)
The compilation ends with the building of an executable, called
'ee'.
Why a Micro-Emacs
-----------------
I like the elegance of a very small editor, and using the terminal,
tmux and terminal applications.
Early 2020, when I started out learning to use GNU Emacs (with
vanilla key-bindings), using a Micro-Emacs helped me a lot. A
Micro-Emacs felt less intimidating than the full fledged Emacs. I
know that this is not rational thinking, and this is all in my head,
but it worked.
Micro indeed
------------
Ersatz-Emacs is very small indeed. The executable ee is just 39K.
ldd ee
ee:
-ltermcap.0 => /usr/lib/libtermcap.so.0
-lc.12 => /usr/lib/libc.so.12
Smaller than ed
...............
For comparison: ed on the same Arm NetBSD 3.0 box is 58K.
ldd ed
ed:
-lcrypt.0 => /lib/libcrypt.so.0
-lc.12 => /lib/libc.so.12
Windows and buffers
-------------------
Ersatz-Emacs can work with several files and several buffers, and
the screen can be split into multiple windows. Like any other
Micro-Emacs, windows can only split horizontally (one above the
other).
Splitting windows uses the well-known keybindings:
- C-x 2 to split the screen and add a window
- C-x o to go move the-other-window
- C-x 1 to show only one window
Scroll the-other-window up or down with M-C-v and M-C-z.
Usage
-----
You won't need much time to get going with Ersatz-Emacs. The
keybindings for cursor-movement, searching, and basic editing are
the same as in vanilla GNU Emacs, and so is the method for copying
or deleting a region.
Filling paragraphs works also the same as in Emacs:
- First set the right margin, with C-u [column-number] C-x f
- Put the cursor (point) somewhere in a paragraph
- Hit M-q
Read the Friendly Manual
------------------------
Have a look at the great key-bindings chart, and the ee man-page,
both shipped in the tar-ball.
Download
--------
You can find the tar-ball at:
http://rho.tuxfamily.org/museum/
Last edited: $Date: 2022/12/11 09:47:00 $
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