Aucb.109
fa.editor-p
utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!C70:editor-p
Thu Dec 3 17:14:14 1981
Orthogonal command structures
>From Admin.JQJ@SU-SCORE Thu Dec 3 16:56:22 1981
From: Richard M. Stallman <RMS AT MIT-AI>
It is a mistake to regard any particular command language
as inherent in the idea of EMACS.
I disagree as a matter of sociology rather than necessity of design. The
defining characteristic of EMACS is that it is user-extensible. I claim that
one result of that flexibility is that any actually used command set will be
one that ``just growed'' based on ``mutual sharing'' , and was shaped by many
people's needs and interests (Stallman, 1981). Such a community or
evolutionary approach to an editor seems very likely to result in a command set
that is NOT regular. For hackers and frequent users of an editor, current
research seems pretty clear that a keystroke-minimization approach is optimal
for editor design (Card, Moran, & Newell, 1980a, Card, Moran, & Newell, 1980b,
Rumelhart & Norman, 1981); EMACS is well suited to such an approach because the
individual user can apply what amounts to interactive data compression,
defining new commands so as to minimize his/her typing. But such typing
minimization plays hob with a regular command set. A cross-product command set
is unlikely to survive Huffman coding, and hence is unlikely in an Emacs-style
editor.
From: Ken Harrenstien <KLH AT MIT-AI>
Have you ever seen NLS (now AUGMENT)? This is a true cross-product
command language system that has been around for quite a while. I
have used it and EMACS for several years, and while the former is
easier to learn (and easier to remember obscure commands for), the
latter is easier to use.
This problem might in part be due to the age of NLS (Roberts, 1979); editor
technology has in fact improved over the years. A fairer comparison would be
with a recently designed cross-product system such as ZED (Pratt, 1980),
Vaughan Pratt's orthogonal command display editor (aka DOC), or DEC's EDT (DEC
EDT, 1980).
There has been quite a bit of research on command languages recently. For
example, some folks at Bell Labs (if you're reading this, I'd like to see your
work or at least get a citation) have been studying natural names for typical
editor commands. They find, as one might expect, that ``scratch`` (IBM),
``wipe``, ``delete`` (Tops-20), ``yank'' (DG teco), et alia are all very
obscure and counterintuitive names for eliminating a file; perhaps a better
choice of command names will yield orthogonal editors which are preferable to
NLS?
From: Jan Walker <JWALKER@BBNA>
Principle I. Easy things should be easy to do. It is nice
but not as necessary for complex things to be easy to do.
The problem with this rule is that it isn't clear what ``easy things'' are. Is
deleting to end of the paragraph (``D1EPAR'' in EDT, or ``C-@<ALT>]C-w'' in
default Emacs) an easy or a hard thing? Should it be easy to type? For that
matter, is it easier to type in EDT or in Emacs? It is certainly easier to
remember in EDT!
REFERENCES
Card, S. K., Moran, T. P. & Newell, A. Computer text editing: An information-
processing analysis of a routine cognitive skill. Cognitive Psychology,
1980, 12(1), 32-74.
Card, S. K., Moran, T. P. & Newell, A. The Keystroke Model for User Performance
Time with Interactive Systems. Communications of the ACM, July 1980,
23(7), NoPages. Also available as Xerox PARC SSL-79-1.
Digital Equipment Corporation. VAX-11 EDT Editor Reference Manual (EDT V2.0
ed.). Maynard, MA: Author, April 1980. DEC Order No. AA-H944A-TE.
Pratt, V. ZED Manual. 1980. Available from the author. Send ARPAnet mail to
CSD.PRATT at SU-SCORE.
Roberts, T. Evaluation of Computer Text Editors. Doctoral dissertation,
Stanford University, 1979. Also available as Xerox PARC memorandum SSL-
79-9, November 1979.
Rumelhart, D.E. & Norman, D.A. Simulating a Skilled Typist: A study of skilled
cognitive-motor performance (Tech. Rep.). University of California, San
Diego, 1981.
Stallman, R. M. Emacs Manual for Twenex Users (AI Memo 555). Cambridge, MA:
MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, 1981.
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