🚀 go-pugleaf

(People often ask about the editor 'sam' - here are some opinions,
some information about getting it, and the reference to the paper on
it) 

In article <9984@smoke.BRL.MIL> (newsgroup comp.lang.c), 
gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>) writes:
>
>I stopped using our EMACS editors for most purposes once Rob Pike's "sam"
>editor became available.  Its use of the mouse is cleanly integrated into
>the design of the editor's bitmap interface, not just tacked on as an
>afterthought.  It makes a considerable difference.

A note of dissent - I feel uncomfortable with editors which offer *NO*
way of moving the cursor other than the mouse.

I did try sam, I liked its mouse integration, menus and windows. I
hope Emacs Version 19 will have learnt something about these from sam.
But having to take my hands off the keyboard and move the mouse to fix
something on the previous line, to find another file, to search for a
string, or even save the file, that feels little unpleasant. 

It has definitely got its functions separated along very clean lines -
you want to type in a window, click on it - this includes the command
window. *Any* screen editing other than deleting the character/word
just typed, requires the mouse and menus. 

Like the emacs family, sam does handle multiple buffers/files/windows
- it has arbitrarily overlapping windows, but they are still all
constrained within the main window. I don't seem to be able to ever
get my window 80 chars wide, since it has no feedback; there must be a
way around this) Windows have their own scrollbars. The click-to-type
feels a little unusual in the X environment - it blends in
consistently with the blit environment.

All this nice stuff only works on a machine with a graphics display
and a mouse (blits, X, suntools) - on a plain old tty, sam feels
pretty much like ed, but different...

I really missed all the nice Jove/Emacs features I've grown used to -
fill-paragraph, compile-it, parse-errors, c-mode, fill-comment,
filename and command completion - I felt really relieved when I went
back to Jove.

I'm not even sure I would recommend it for users who wanted a simple
text editor - they'd still need to know the ed-like commands for the
command window. There isn't really a tutorial, and there isn't any
online help.

Ok - enough fanning the editor war flames. Some information now:

(I'm not sure how recent this information about the AT&T Toolchest is
- it's from the black hole I call a filing system...) 

sam is available from AT&T, through the ``UNIX System Toolchest.'' For
more information about the Toolchest, call (201) 522-6900 with your
1200-baud terminal and log in as `guest' (no password).

%A Pike, Rob
%T The text editor sam
%J Software - Practice and Experience
%V 17
%N 11
%D November 1987
%P 813-845

%A Pike, Rob
%T Window Systems Should Be Transparent
%J USENIX Computing Systems
%V 1
%N 3
%P 279-296
%D Summer, 1988
%X The "Controversy" paper in the issue, offers some guidelines and ideas
for designing window systems and window based applications. Argues for
simplicity and unobtrusiveness in window systems.