[Info-vax] Lisp alternatives for Emacs [was Re: Python for x86?]

[Po Lu]

Rich Alderson <news at alderson.users.panix.com> writes:

> EMACS began life as a library of macros for the MIT AI Lab's dialect
> of TECO for the PDP-10.  (TECO itself was written in MIDAS, a powerful
> macro assembler that originated on the PDP-6.)  Initially, a real time
> editing feature was added, and several hackers created small libraries
> of their own favorite macros, then a hacker named Richard Stallman
> gathered up all those libraries, eliminated duplicates and
> rationalized the implementation, and released the result to the
> community.
>
> EMACS was ported from the ITS operating system on their PDP-10s to
> TENEX (ancestral to TOPS-20) by porting TECO there.
>
> EMACS was also ported to Multics on the Honeywell 6180 processor at
> the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, but not by porting TECO.
> Instead, the MACLISP dialect of LISP, another creation of the AI Lab,
> had already been ported to Multics, so that was used as the base
> language for the EMACS port.
>
> Meanwhile, an editor with the capabilities of EMACS was desired for
> the Lisp machines being created by the AI Lab, so taking their cue
> from the Multics port two Lisp based editors, EINE ("EINE Is Not
> EMACS") and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE Initially"), were created.
>
> By now, Stallman was interested in creating an unburdened operating
> system for exotic hardware (like VAXes and SUNs), and needed an
> editor, so he ported the underlying Lisp and established an Emacs on
> top.
>
> There might have been alternatives, but why fuck with a good thing?

BTW, GNU Emacs once worked on VMS.  However, the code was deleted when
it seemed that HP was about to give up on VMS entirely.

Since VMS is alive again, would anyone like to step up to resurrect the
old port?