My original question:
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I have the following request from a user: "Is there a full screen editor
for the SUN that I can bring up from the MAC?"
Credits:
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- Tariq Ahmed
- David Fetrow
- celeste Stokely
- Niall O Broin
- Larry Williamson
- Tim Iskander
- Gerald Combs
- Alan Hill
- Rich Snyder
- Thomas Plesha
- Mike Youngberg
- Gary Carr
- Harvey Wamboldt
- Jim Harmon
- Justin Young
Highlights of responses:
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If the MAC is running a Xserver, you can display anything from
the SUN, eg pico or emacs. (if I understand your question correctly).
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Well, you could use CAP to export files from the
Sun so the user could edit them on the Mac using a
Mac editor.
Likewise by adding an NFS client to the Mac.
OR...add an Xwindows implementation to the Mac and
use some X-capable editor (e.g. xemacs, emacs, xedit)
on the Sun but displaying on the Mac.
Or, if they just want a really easy to use editor
get pico from http://www.cac.washington.edu/pine
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question is a wee bit confusing, but a couple of suggestions:
o get MacX (from apple) to run a X session on the mac and
then you can run any of the Sun based stuff.
o Check out alpha and/or bbedit. Both are popular editors for
the mac. Alpha is a bit like emacs, nly TCL based instead
lisp (has a lot of the same key bindings)
o the Columbia Appletalk Package turns your Sun into an
appleshare server for easy access from the mac (we used it
for backups too)
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Their best bet is probably BBEdit. It is a very nice editing package for
the Mac that lets you open and save files via ftp. BBEdit is at
Another alternative is to get an X server for the Mac, run an X-based
editor on the Sun, and have it displayed on the Mac. IMHO, BBEdit beats
the pants off this type of setup, and is less expensive to boot.
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Are you talking about a text editor? You need to run something like White
Pine's eXodus Xterm software and you should then be able to run anything
that runs on unix, maybe xemacs.
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If you install an X server on the MAC (such as eXodus) and enable xlogins
on the SUN (xdm) then the user can run vi or xemacs or whatever unix tools
are available via X on the MAC.
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There is an editer called "tkedit" that is tcl based. I use it on our Suns.
I know tcl is supported on the Mac, but I've never used tkedit on the Mac.
You might give it a try. Since tcl is interpreted it is a little slow on
older Suns. I suspect you would have to have a power PC Mac to get
acceptable performance.
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Have you tried "nedit" (ftp.fnal.gov in the /pub/nedit directory)? It
is a "GUI" type editor which is what I assume you are looking for. It
is certainly easy to use, and suits casual users. It wouldn't strain
their brains the way "emacs" or "vi" would ;-) (Let me take a second
to slip on my fire proof suit ;) Personally I prefer emacs, and for
anyone that programs on workstations for a living (as I do), I would
recommend that they consider emacs an essential tool well worth the
effort of learning (if nothing else, its a good hobby ;).
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If your MAC has "X-Windows" capability, then you can use any UNIX editor
on the MAC screen.
The one "gotcha" that you will have to overcome is that the DEFAULT
keyboard setting for the MAC will not recognize the "delete"/"backspace"
key when in terminal emulations. (This irritates me no end.)
You can change the property of the backspace key to allow "erase".
When you've done that, any screen editor should work correctly in VT100
emulations, regardless of the S/W.
(We use InterCon TCP/Connect 2 and 4 on our MACs, and the terminal
emulation is very good. After enabling the backspace/delete, it works
as well as any GOOD PC terminal emulation, with the exception of
Microsoft's Telnet Terminal which won't recognize most ASCII control
sequences, thus dying anytime you try to screen-edit.)
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If you want to edit files on the mac and then transfer them via ftp w/
Fetch or whatever, that's doable too. Just remember to save the file as
a DOS based textfile then strip the linefeeds w/ dos2unix(1) or some
other script.
Thank you for all of your input.
Vicky Lau
vlau@msmail2.hac.com