Tektronix emulation (was Re: X11R4 xterm on RS/6000)

[GerardJan Vinkesteyn]

In article <1990Aug23.032925.23403 at cs.utk.edu>, moore at betelgeuse.cs.utk.edu (Keith Moore) writes:
> In article <1990Aug17.191659.13510 at ibmpa> jsalter at slo.UUCP (James Salter) writes:
> >In article <1990Aug17.115057.3821 at galadriel.bt.co.uk> andy at galadriel.bt.co.uk (Andy Howcroft) writes:
> (in response to an article by David Battle)
> >>Yes...but you won't like it. Try launching the IBM junk out of the
> >>nearest window and the buy a 'real' workstation.
> >
> >If you don't like it you're more than welcome to.  However, it would be
> >nice to know why you think it's "junk" instead of casually throwing out
> >comments like that.  Specifics, please.  In terms of floating-point it's
> >the hottest thing on the market, though thats more my area.
> 
> The hardware, however fast, isn't worth a lot without a decent operating 
> system and development tools.
> 
> And when we point out, for instance, that the C compiler is brain damaged 
> because its error messages can't be parsed by emacs for file name and line 
> number, IBM suggests extensive changes to emacs's message parsing code.
> But it's not emacs that's broken -- it's worked just fine for years with 
> lots of other C compilers.  It doesn't take too many responses like this
> to convince me that AIX is suffering from a severe lack of understanding
> of UNIX design philosophy, coupled with a bit of an attitude problem.
> 
Thank you Keith, for your comments. I don't agree, however, with the above
comments. More computer manufacturers deliver these kind of C compilers
(not Bull by the way). It is a more user friendly, stricter syntax checking,
compiler, especially for the novice user. Nothing can be against that.
Harris uses the same scheme. Though my emacs is called jove (I only use Jove 
for better performance and less memory use) and it is easily adjustable via the
error-format-string setting. 

You can shoot at IBM for their silly advertisements, still don't who that
Gonzales guy is. But if they are good then they come up with a very decent
Unix machine. Marketing it is another issue. Perhaps CMU comes up with a nice
BSD environment, perhaps by that time BSD is outdated because of SVr4,
however, that is a whole different discussion all to gether. 

  :entry "error-format-string" "Variable"
  This is the error format string that is used by "parse-errors" to find
  the  error  messages  in  a buffer.  The way it works is by using this
  string as a JOVE regular expression search string, where the \('s  and
  \)'s  regular  expression operators are used to pick out the file name
  and line number from  the  line  containing  an  error  message.   For
  instance, a typical error message might look like this:
  
          "file.c", line 540: missing semi-colon
  
  For strings of this format, an appropriate  value  for  "error-format-
  string" would be something like this:
  
          ^"\([^"]*\)", line \([0-9]*\):
  
  What this means is, to find  an  error  message,  search  for  a  line
  beginning  with  a  double-quote.  Then it says that all the following
  characters up to another double-quote  should  be  remembered  as  one
  unit,  namely  the filename that the error is in (that's why the first
  set of parens are surrounding  it).   Then  it  says  that  after  the
  filename there will be the string ", line " followed by a line number,
  which should be remembered as a single unit (which is why  the  second
  set  of  parens  is  around  that).  The only constraints on the error
  messages is that the file name and line  number  appear  on  the  same
  line,  and  that  the  file name appears before the line number.  Most
  compilers seem to do this anyway,  so  this  is  not  an  unreasonable
  restriction.
  
  If you do not know how to use regular expressions then  this  variable
  will  be  hard  for  you  to  use.  Also note that you can look at the
  default value of this variable by printing it out, but it is a  really
  complicated  string because it is trying to accommodate the outputs of
  more than one compiler at a time.
  



-- 
Gerard Jan Vinkesteyn				Bull Netherlands
Internet: gerard at bull.nl			Hoogoorddreef 66-68
Uucp: nlbull!gerard				1101 BE  Amsterdam
# name change because of French Connection...	s/gertjan/gerard/