
“Ed is the standard text editor.” (1991) - Shoop
https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.txt
======
gumby
vi is of course just a visual interface to ed, so they have the same commands,
based on Multics qed.

I don't know about GNU Emacs, but the original Emacs (in TECO) had a "slow
terminal" mode that did minimal updating, and a "printing terminal" mode that
really just kept you up to date on what was going on around the cursor. It
worked fine in a pinch. If I didn't want that I just used TECO, which his like
using ed only more compact and of course programmable.

Speaking of slow terminal mode: the SUPDUP protocol (an early visual remote
terminal protocol) had specific support for Emacs in it, so you could edit
over the arpanet and get pretty good response. It repainted and managed the
screen somewhat locally (like a channel controller but full duplex). It was
handy even when the arpanet backbone was upgraded to a 56K line. I also used
it from a KL-20 in Paris -> weird X.25 network -> MIT-Multics -> MIT-AI in the
early pre-TCP 80s and it was bearable...just. SUPDUP made a huge positive
difference.

(SUPDUP because it was a super duper protocol)

~~~
wcummings
>I don't know about GNU Emacs, but the original Emacs (in TECO) had a "slow
terminal" mode that did minimal updating

Sounds like this is baked into emacs pretty deep:
[https://www.facebook.com/notes/daniel-colascione/buttery-
smo...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/daniel-colascione/buttery-smooth-
emacs/10155313440066102/)

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schoen
A fun thing about this is that they joke that vi occupies 1310720 bytes on
disk (which in context I think is meant to seem extremely, unreasonably
large). But in 2017 my current vi binary (which also uses a lot of external
files!) is 2923968 bytes, over twice the size of the imagined binary in the
joke.

~~~
IncRnd
emacs = 8 Megs And Constantly Swapping

~~~
schoen
When I first heard that joke, I thought it meant "it forces you to swap
frequently, even on a system with a (luxurious) 8 MB of main memory". But is
it possible that it means "it forces you to swap frequently with its 8 MB
binary image"?

~~~
IncRnd
I suppose it works either way, but I've always understood that to be about the
size of emacs. Size meaning not just the binary, but that emacs is practically
an OS unto itself.

------
tyingq
Mentions edlin on DOS as well. I remember having to use that now and again.

