Sizes of various editors (was Re: Textedit wars (was vi vs emacs in a student environment))

[O. W. Holmes]

g-rh at cca.CCA.COM (Richard Harter) writes:

>One of the nicest editors I have used is IBM's xedit (given the constraint
>of working on big blue iron.)  I've even heard hard core emacs fans admit
. . .  
>course).  I.e. you edit the screen using terminal hardware and send the
>entire screen to the CPU.  This is not as good as having a work station,
>and much better than editors which make the CPU do all of the work.
-- 
   Along a similar vein, there is an editor on HP3000 systems called
   QEDIT, which is one of the very best editors I have ever used.  It
   also uses screen(block transfer) mode, which is a GREAT relief to
   the CPU (reducing CPU interrupts by hundreds of key strokes).

   However, these editors require Block Mode terminals, and they are 
   not able to move the cursor based upon what is on the screen.

   The future likely lies in using a PC workstation, removing all 
   possible keystroke interrupt overhead from the mainframe cpu, and
   allowing bit-mapped graphics for token-represented object oriented
   editing/development (how's that for a sentence?).

                         - gph