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contrib/mg/README-Mg
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| [This is an edited version of the original mg README, updated slightly to | |||||||||
| reflect changes in the last 20 years.] | |||||||||
| Mg (mg) is a Public Domain EMACS style editor. It is "broadly" | |||||||||
| compatible with GNU Emacs, the latest creation of Richard M. | |||||||||
| Stallman, Chief GNUisance and inventor of Emacs. GNU Emacs (and other | |||||||||
| portions of GNU as they are released) are essentially free, (there are | |||||||||
| handling charges for obtaining it) and so is Mg. You may never have | |||||||||
| to learn another editor. (But probably will, at least long enough to | |||||||||
| port Mg...) Mg was formerly named MicroGnuEmacs, the name change was | |||||||||
| done at the request of Richard Stallman. | |||||||||
| Mg is not associated with the GNU project, and it does not have the | |||||||||
| copyright restrictions present in GNU Emacs. (However, some modules | |||||||||
| do have copyright notices.) The Mg authors individually may or may | |||||||||
| not agree with the opinions expressed by Richard Stallman in "The GNU | |||||||||
| Manifesto". | |||||||||
| This program is intended to be a small, fast, and portable editor for | |||||||||
| people who can't (or don't want to) run real Emacs for one reason | |||||||||
| or another. It is compatible with GNU because there shouldn't be | |||||||||
| any reason to learn more than one Emacs flavor. | |||||||||
| Beyond the work of Dave Conroy, author of the original public domain | |||||||||
| v30, the current version contains the work of: | |||||||||
| blarson@ecla.usc.edu Bob Larson | |||||||||
| mic@emx.utexas.edu Mic Kaczmarczik | |||||||||
| mwm@violet.berkeley.edu Mike Meyer | |||||||||
| sandra@cs.utah.edu Sandra Loosemore | |||||||||
| mp1u+@andrew.cmu.edu Michael Portuesi | |||||||||
| RCKG01M@CALSTATE.BITNET Stephen Walton | |||||||||
| hakanson@mist.cs.orst.edu Marion Hakanson | |||||||||
| People who have worked on previous versions of Mg: | |||||||||
| rtech!daveb@sun.com Dave Brower | |||||||||
| Early release history: | |||||||||
| * Nov 16, 1986: First release to mod.sources | |||||||||
| * Mar 3, 1987: First Release (mg1a) via comp.sources.unix | |||||||||
| * May 26, 1988: Second release: (mg2a) via comp.sources.misc | |||||||||
| * Jan 26, 1992: Linux port released by Charles Hedrick. This version | |||||||||
| later makes its way onto tsx-11, Infomagic, and various other Linux | |||||||||
| repositories. | |||||||||
| * Feb 25, 2000: First import into the OpenBSD tree, where it is | |||||||||
| currently maintained with contributions from many others. | |||||||||
| ---------------------------------------------------------------------- | |||||||||
| Known limitations: | |||||||||
| Recursive bindings may cause help and key rebinding code to go into | |||||||||
pauamma_gundo.com: Not being able to support UTF-8 should be right here IMO. (See CAVEATS in mg.1.) | |||||||||
| an infinite loop, aborting with a stack overflow. | |||||||||
| Overwrite mode does not work in macros. (Characters are inserted | |||||||||
| rather than overwriting.) | |||||||||
| Dired mode has some problems: Rename does not update the buffer. | |||||||||
| Doing a dired again will update the buffer (whether it needs it or | |||||||||
| not) and will lose any marks for deletion. .. and . are not | |||||||||
| recognized as special cases. | |||||||||
| On systems with 16 bit integers, the kill buffer cannot exceed 32767 | |||||||||
| bytes. | |||||||||
| Unlike GNU Emacs, Mg's minibuffer isn't multi-line aware and hence | |||||||||
| some commands like "shell-command-on-region" always pop up a buffer to | |||||||||
| display output irrespective of output's size. | |||||||||
| While navigating source code using Mg's cscope commands, the cursor | |||||||||
| is always at the match location rather than in *cscope* buffer. Mg uses | |||||||||
| the same keybindings of GNU Emacs's xcscope package for it's cscope commands. | |||||||||
Not Done Inline Actions
pauamma_gundo.com: | |||||||||
| As Mg's keybindings are case-insensitive some of the commands don't have a | |||||||||
| default keybinding. | |||||||||
| New implementation oddities: | |||||||||
| insert and define-key are new commands corresponding to the mocklisp | |||||||||
| functions in GNU Emacs. (Mg does not have non-command functions.) | |||||||||
| (Mg's insert will only insert one string.) | |||||||||
| The display wrap code does not work at all like that of GNU emacs. | |||||||||
| Some commands that do not mimic emacs exactly don't have a "standard" | |||||||||
| emacs name. For example 'backup-to-home-directory' is only a partial | |||||||||
| implementation of emacs' range of commands that allow a user to | |||||||||
| customise the backup file location. If a more complete implementation | |||||||||
| were coded of these commands the non standard commands would probably | |||||||||
| be removed. | |||||||||
Not being able to support UTF-8 should be right here IMO. (See CAVEATS in mg.1.)