Re: ed & press return to continue

[Andrew L. Moore]

Folks,
As GNU ed's neglectful coder, I will be able to dedicate some
time to a new release soon (mid-November).  A lot of suggestions
have been submitted, but a lot of others need tracking down.  As for
handing it over, I would if the new maintainer agreed to release a
BSD-styled/licenced version for the BSD community.  Otherwise, please
do not despair - ye have not been forsaken.
-AM


In message <address@hidden>, Paul Jackson writes:
>|> 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