[Sheflug] Emacs & Hypertext

[nospam [at] csuh.nhs.uk]

Dear All,
	With any luck this should be in plain text, please let me know if is
or not.

	I'm also sorry for the slow responses, but I have a wife and three
kids to look after and I am half way through doing a part time degree so you
see I have other things to do as well as compute.

Chris Wrote :-

>ooo...you'll have the emacs people drawing daggers for calling emacs "just"

>an editor :-) emacs vs. vi wars are the epitome of UNIX. You'd have seen
one 
>sooner or later. Some are fairly jest-like and friendly (like 'ere), but
I've 
>seen some turn into right flame-fests on comp.unix.* and comp.os.linux.* 
>before now...

	Yes I know that Emacs is much more than just a text editor, the
point of the comment is that which editor you feel comfortable with is down
to personal choice, everyone is different. Everyone makes a choice and that
choice is right for them, the only problem arises when we try to impose our
personal choices on other people.

	I don't feel comfortable with Vi, this is not a criticism of Vi it's
just not right for me, I can't get my head around all those arcane commands
and having to keep track of wether I'm in edit or command mode, but thats
because I'm hard of thinking. I find Emacs a lot more comfortable to use,
but it could do with being a lot more user friendly.

	Emacs is the main reason I am now trying to learn Linux and not
sticking with Microsoft products. A few years ago I had to use a Mac (not
mine) and there was a program called Hyper Card. It is a wonderful program
which has never been adequately duplicated on the PC!

	I'm also a fan of Lotus Agenda, the power and flexibility of Lotus
Agenda has also not been duplicated by any Windows program.

	If the two could be combined. Well this could be a killer
application!

	I want hypertext but not HTML. The approach used for HTML is to have
named locations, the problem is that when you activate a link you need to
find the destination of the link. Normally the program builds an index for
the file so the file must remain static whilst the index is being used. This
means that there are two modes of operation, an editing mode and a usage
mode. You cannot traverse links whilst in the editing mode and you cannot
add text in the usage mode.

	I do not like the style of HTML editors, they are great for fixed
documents which will be planned out and written once but the switching
between modes means that they are not very good for odd notes and
interactive documents which will be composed spontaneously and updated
continuously, but this is exactly the type of usage I have for a hypertext
system.

	Looking through a website one day after yet another search on
"Hypertext" I came across a program called Hyperbole written in Lisp for a
text editor called Emacs, (the website was www.gnu.org) and therefore I have
to get Emacs working on my machine in order to run Hyperbole. So far I have
un tarred it and unzipped it all I have to do now is to work out how to glue
it into Emacs. It shouldn't be difficult. When I get around to it amongst
the one hundred and one other things I have to do. Roll on summer and the
end of another year at SHU, hopefully I will get some more time to get Linux
sorted out.

	I haven't asked any questions but I welcome your comments.

Regards

Paul J. Miller
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