🚀 go-pugleaf

felix@laas.fr (Francois Felix INGRAND) writes:
>I was told that a version of Epoch for NeXT existed and was available
>cs.uiuc.edu.
>I spend much time and money to download the 5 megabytes of this archive (named
>epoch-next.tar.Z in the directory pub/epoch-files/epoch) only to discover:
>- there are 2 executables, each being 2.1 megabytes. 
>- there are all .o,  a new-temacs (1.7 mega) and a temacs (1.7 mega)
>- these executables hard wire the load path of emacs.
>- if you try to recompile, you get mucho errors, and no README or HELP to
>explain how the guy got the binaries...
>- the archive does not contains the lisp library,

>All that to say that I am really pissed. I basically downloaded 5 mega of
>useless garbage. I do not know who put this archive in place, but he may as
>well remove it...

Um - the lisp library is the same as Emacs, except for the epoch-lisp
stuff, which, again, is the same across different epochs.  You can
change the load-path trivially.

Clearly, it would be better to package the binaries separately, but if
they work (which is not clear from your post), they are quite usable,
and no less good than your own recompilation, unless, of course, you
want to actually hack them somewhat.

--chet--

I'd like to echo Chet's implication that anyone planning to use epoch
should at least know how to set the load path themselves, and in
general know their way around the emacs/epoch sources well enough to
find the lisp libraries, etc. Epoch has always been advertised as an
explicitly experimental variant of emacs: caveat emptor. Complain if
it doesn't work, but not just because you have to find (and set) a
couple of shell variables to get it to do what you want.

--Steve Anderson

In article <ANDERSON.91Aug21212511@sapir.cog.jhu.edu> anderson@sapir.cog.jhu.edu (Stephen R. Anderson) writes:
   I'd like to echo Chet's implication that anyone planning to use epoch
   should at least know how to set the load path themselves [...]

How about we start a comp.sys.next.Epoch newsgroup? Anyone?
--
- I speak _ONLY_ for myself. _ONLY_. I do _NOT_ speak for anyone _BUT_ myself. 

In article <CNH5730.91Aug22082948@calvin.tamu.edu>
cnh5730@calvin.tamu.edu (Charles Herrick) writes:

   How about we start a comp.sys.next.Epoch newsgroup? Anyone?

On the off chance that this is something other than just sarcasm, let
me point to the group gnu.epoch.misc, where discussion of epoch takes
place. I think there may still be a mailing list version in existence,
too, for those without access to the gnu newsgroups.

Once again, while epoch is by and large a pretty stable and highly
useable product, it is explicitly an experiment with one particular
set of implementation choices for a multi-screen emacs. If you want
something (for free) that has just about all of the problems ironed
out of it, stick with emacs.

--Steve Anderson

Sorry about the preceding message, which is unlikely to do much good
posted here :-) .....I was trying to follow up to some foolishness in
comp.next.programmer and somehow it wound up (self-referentially? Do I
have that smart a newsposter?) here.

--Steve Anderson

In article <ANDERSON.91Aug21212511@sapir.cog.jhu.edu> anderson@sapir.cog.jhu.edu (Stephen R. Anderson) writes:

   Organization: Dept. of Cognitive Science, The Johns Hopkins University
   Lines: 9
   Xref: laas gnu.epoch.misc:248 comp.sys.next.programmer:480 comp.sys.next.misc:1771

   I'd like to echo Chet's implication that anyone planning to use epoch
   should at least know how to set the load path themselves, and in
   general know their way around the emacs/epoch sources well enough to
   find the lisp libraries, etc. Epoch has always been advertised as an
   explicitly experimental variant of emacs: caveat emptor. Complain if
   it doesn't work, but not just because you have to find (and set) a
   couple of shell variables to get it to do what you want.

   --Steve Anderson

I am the original poster of the complaints about the screw up version of Epoch
Next....

n my original article I was not only complaining about the LOADPATH, but on the
fact that the archive was full of .o and temacs (2 copies) and various compiled
version of epoch (2 copies) ... All that for 5 megas...

What kind of impression do you have when you download 5 mega of software to
discover that 1) it has not been clean up 2) the change made to get this
version of epoch compiling are not even documented and installed in the source,
3) as a consequence it does not even compile again properly....???  If you
are lucky enough to download things for free... You probably do not care...

I do, and I am telling other people that this version of Epoch is pretty much
useless as is.
--
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Francois Felix INGRAND                   "Read my Lisp... No new syntax" (nil)
felix@laas.fr

Since I am the person who put the epoch stuff there, let me apologize for
not cleaning up the distribution.  It's certainly NOT our intention to
place sofware that doesnt work, but it does happen.  

Instructions for setting the LOADPATH are prominently contained in the
Emacs manuals, READMEs, etc.  We DO assume that people know how to do this;
as Epoch has become more widely used, this assumption is less and less
valid, and our installation docs will (hopefully) be better in Epoch 4.0.  

The version of Epoch-next on cs.uiuc.edu is rather old right now; given OS
changes since I released it, it probably doesnt work on the NeXT anymore.
I have a new version here and have installed it on cs.uiuc.edu.  I'll post
another note about that in a minute.

The new version is clean (ie no core or .o files) and takes 3.9Meg of disk
space in compressed form.

Again, my apologies for any inconvenience.

--
Simon Kaplan					kaplan@cs.uiuc.edu 
Department of Computer Science			uiucdcs!kaplan@uunet.uu.net
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	
1304 W. Springfield Ave				phone: +1 217 244 0392
Urbana Illinois 61801, USA			fax:   +1 217 333 3501

In article <KAPLAN.91Aug26104027@marula.cs.uiuc.edu> kaplan@marula.cs.uiuc.edu (Simon Kaplan) writes:

   From: kaplan@marula.cs.uiuc.edu (Simon Kaplan)
   Newsgroups: gnu.epoch.misc,comp.sys.next.programmer,comp.sys.next.misc
   Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
...

   The version of Epoch-next on cs.uiuc.edu is rather old right now; given OS
   changes since I released it, it probably doesnt work on the NeXT anymore.
   I have a new version here and have installed it on cs.uiuc.edu.  I'll post
   another note about that in a minute.

   The new version is clean (ie no core or .o files) and takes 3.9Meg of disk
   space in compressed form.

The new version is "perfect". It compiles fine and contains all the libraries
(lisp lib and contrib). I installed it without any problem. 

FYI: It works under CoXist.

Thanks again, and sorry if my original complaints were too "strong",
--
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Francois Felix INGRAND                   "Read my Lisp... No new syntax" (nil)
felix@laas.fr