[gopher] OT: Anyone interested in text editor programming? (fwd)

[Rich Alderson]

> Video TECO is an attempt to re-create this great old editor in a
> version that any Tom, Dick, or Harry would understand.  It was written
> by Paul Cantrell ten years ago; the files had been lost, until I
> discovered a snapshot of the source hiding in my e-mail inbox.  I've
> even found a patch to make it run on Linux.  So I've re-released it
> under the Sleepycat Licence, and I am currently enlisting developers
> to help me add new features and squash bugs.

Who is this fellow, and what makes him think that TECO, visual or otherwise,
has ever been lost????

*I* haven't lost it, and I am the maintainer of MIT TECO and EMACS, and have
been since I posted a Y2K fix to comp.emacs and gnu.emacs.bugs (or whatever
the newsgroup was called at the time).  RMS stated that he had no idea that
anyone was maintaining it, and that if I wanted to take it on, I should go
for it.  As I was working for a company that built PDP-10 clone systems at
the time, I did so quite happily.

Video TECO has never been lost.  It was written by PDP-10 engineers at DEC
in the 1970s, and it still present on the Tops-10 distribution tapes (as
images at http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/).

10 years ago is not all that long in the history of TECO, and I have no
idea who Mr. Cantrell might be, but I misdoubt he would have a great deal
to say about the expropriation of his work by this fellow without, as far
as I can tell, so much as a "By your leave".

$DEITY, I hate children who think that because something is unknown to them
it must be unknown to all the world!


Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Server Engineer
Vulcan, Inc.
505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104

mailto:RichA at vulcan.com
mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org

http://www.PDPplanet.org/
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