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From: Michael Ring <m DOT ring AT ndh DOT net>
To: cygwin-apps AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com
Subject: Re: Editors for cygwin distribution
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 00:48:20 +0200
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On Tue, 13 Jun 2000 06:25:08 -0700 (PDT), you wrote:

>I downloaded from a Debian mirror the elvis-tiny package and built it by hand. 
>The code isn't licensed in that the author gives permission to do whatever with
>the code.  It functions as vi or ex based on name or switches and has a binary
>footprint of 88,064 bytes when stripped.  I think this would be a great
>resource in that most all UNIX users expect to find vi in a UNIX system.
>
>Cheers,
>

I re-installed a fresh cygwin 1.1.2 dist from cygwin and tested if the
ncurses tree needs to be installed for nano. The good message is, that
ncurses with fallback enabled works fine without the
Terminal-Database.

I had a 'minor' problem with ee (It stackdumped) but nano worked
fine.Cursor Keys were working and the Ctrl-Keys were working as
expected. The performance issue (nano felt somehow slow when I first
tested it) seems to have gone away after the fresh install of the
cygwin tools. 

So, at this point I would make nano my favorite for including it in
cygwin; 
I am not sure if elvis is the right solution because I would
definetely prefer vim because it is very widely used and comes with a
very nice gtk-based GUI; it has syntax highlighting support and all
the nice things that qualify it as a programmers editor. The problem
that ncurses is needed for vim does not seem to be an issue anymore
because of the fallback support inside of ncurses.

I also compiled XEmacs yesterday and it seems to work, too (NO, I
definetely did not really test the port, I am a vi-lover.. but someone
seemed to have ported it already, I found some cygwin32 entries in the
configure script); at least it started up like the unix version,
looked like the unix version and i was able to type 'Hello World'
without any crash ;-)


So for me the 'personally best' choice would be to:

include nano 
perhaps include a stripped down version of vim
offer to the users optional packages 
with the full vim-version
with a full xemacs (or emacs, I don't care) version (If someone double
checks that it works, of course)
as optional downloads.

This would make the basic distribution small (Hmmm... perhaps some
more packages have to be dumped from the cygwin-dist to make this
true)
and would offer power users the chance to upgrade to full-blown
editors in case they need them;


How do you others think about my ideas ?

Till then,

Michael Ring