Re: ed & press return to continue

[Paul Jackson]

|> ed 0.2 has the annoying habit of asking me to "press <return>
|> to continue" on a longer-than-24-line print command, even when
|> I am in an Emacs window.  Traditional ed does not do this.

I agree that it is annoying, being a regular user of traditional
ed for 20+ years now (not inside emacs ').

It is a "linux-tradition" now, it seems.  So if there is anyone
left using ed besides us two, you might have to make it some sort
of option, defaulting to the annoying mode unless some config-file,
option or environ-var says otherwise.


|> Is anyone still maintaining ed?  If not, I'll volunteer.  I use
|> it a lot, mostly for editing crontabs in remote-login windows
|> in emacs :).

I'd repost your query on "comp.editors", where it is more
common to see "ed" mentioned.

The last I tried to find an "ed" maintainer, I didn't get too far.

I did get the following response:

|> From address@hidden  Tue May 11 16:02:52 1999
|> To: pj (Paul Jackson)
|> cc: address@hidden
|> Subject: Re: Proposal for ed(1) feature. 
|> Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 16:02:28 -0700
|> From: "Andrew_L. Moore" <address@hidden>
|> 
|> I maintain ed(1) under a GNU and a modified BSD license
|> Would SGI consent to the BSD licensed distribution as  well?
|> Thanks for the suggestion.  This is a nice comprise to 
|> multiple file support.
|> You might post to bugs-gnu-utils group ( I am on a very slow link
|>         P.S. gnu.utils.bug
|> and can't look up the exact address, sorry) for wider comments.
|> But that it is a feature in wide distribution is a good reason
|> for inclusion.
|> -AM

But then, after some effort to get any interest (pro or con)
on gnu.utils.org, and trying to get back to Andrew with the
results (a couple of offhand remarks), I never heard from
Andrew again.

So far as I can tell, the gnu licensed ed has not been touched
since 1994.

If you do decide to make an ed 0.3, I'd like to contribute the
following feature:

|>     I would like to add a feature to ed(1) - the ability to
|>     edit multiple command line specified files in a single
|>     ed invocation.
|> 
|>     I have, in a previous life, included this feature in all
|>     the Unix systems shipped by Convergent, including the AT&T
|>     Unix PC (circa 1985).  In my current life, as an employee
|>     of SGI for the last 10 years, I have included a different
|>     implementation of this feature in all SGI Irix systems
|>     shipped in the last 8 years.
|> 
|>     Now, with SGI's consent, I would like to include this
|>     feature in the gnu (GPL'd) version and BSD-licensed ed.
|> 
|> A comment from my copy of the code explains its usage:
|> 
|>     /*
|>      * ed file1 file2 ...
|>      *
|>      * Supports editing multiple files named on the command line.
|>      * To switch from the (N)th file to the (N+1)th file,
|>      * issue the command: e %.  The '%' is replaced with the name
|>      * of the next file from the command line.
|>      */
|> 
|> The implementation is simple, less than a dozen short lines of
|> code.
|> 
|> It's very non-intrusive -- if you don't attempt the command
|> 'e %', then nothing is changed.  And if you invoke 'e %', but
|> haven't named multiple files on the command line, it still
|> behaves just like before -- tries to edit a file named '%'.
-- 
-- 
I won't rest till it's the best ...      Manager, Linux System Software
Paul Jackson (address@hidden; address@hidden) 3x1373 http://sam.engr.sgi.com/pj