MG README Oct 25, 1986

MicroGnuEmacs (mg) is a Public Domain EMACS style editor.  It is
"broadly" compatible with GNU Emacs, the latest creation of Richard M.
Stallman, Chief GNUisance and inventor of Emacs.  GNU Emacs (and other
portions of GNU as they are released) are esentially free, (there are
handling charges for obtaining it) and so is MicroGnuEmacs.  You may
never have to learn another editor.  (But probably will, at least long
enough to port MicroGnuEmacs...)

MicroGnuEmacs is not associated with the GNU project, and does not
have the copyright restrictions present in GNU Emacs.  (However, a few
of the system dependent modules do have copyright notices.)  The
MicroGnuEmacs authors individually may or may not agree with the
opinions expressed by Richard Stallman and the GNU project. 

This program is intended to be a small, fast, and portable editor for
people who can't run real Emacs thing for one reason or another.  It
is compatible with GNU because there shouldn't be any reason to learn
more than one Emacs flavor.  We have excised most MicroEMACS features
that were incompatible with the big brother, and added missing
features that seemed essential. 

There are at least two other major versions of MicroEMACS in
circulation.  One comes from Daniel Lawrence, (based on an old version
from Dave Conroy) and is available from mod.sources.  It uses a 3.x
version numbering scheme, and the latest I know about is 3.7i.  It has
some features not found in MicroGnuEmacs, is bigger, and is
incompatible with GNU Emacs.  It might be a better choice for you if
you *must* have something not present here and can't run GNU. 

Another variety uses a different numbering scheme, and is up to v30.
This also comes from mod.sources, and is the latest version from the
original MicroEMACS author Dave Conroy.  MicroGnuEmacs is derived from
this version, and we hope to replace it. 

Code will move fairly easily between MicroGnuEmacs and v30
derivatives.  It will not move easily to the 3.x strain because of
diverging ideas about how things should work internally.  Command
functions and keymapping, for instance, are completely different
between the two flavors. 

This is the fourth Beta distribution of MicroGnuEmacs.  Beyond the work
of Dave Conroy, author of the original public domain v30, this contains
the efforts of:

	mwm@ucbopal.berkeley.edu	Mike Meyer
	mic@ngp.utexas.edu		Mic Kaczmarczik
	blarson@usc-oberon.arpa		Bob Larson
	rtech!daveb@sun.com		Dave Brower

Special thanks are due the first three fellows, who did most of the work.

These systems are known to work in the current version:

	4.2 BSD
	OS9/68k

These systems have been known to work at one of the previous beta
verisons:

	System V
	Eunice
	VMS
	Amiga

As far as MG is concerned, Ultix-32 is equivalent to BSD unix.

It should support MSDOS, PCDOS, and the Rainbow if you swipe the sys
and tty files from the v30 distribution and modify them as specified
in the file sys.tty.mods.  It obviously hasn't been tested. 

How to Make a MicroGnuEmacs
---------------------------

On UNIX at least, it's easy.  (Note that even on these systems you may
want to change a compile time option.)  If you have BSD UNIX, do:

	ln sys/bsd/Makefile .
	make

For System V, do:

	ln sys/sysv/Makefile .
	make

There are several other directories under sys: osk, vms, and eunice.
You should follow the directions contained therein.  

For most systems, the termcap terminal definition is used.  There is a
readme file in the termcap subdirectory of the tty directory explaining
what entries are used and how.  (Termcap is a way to do display
manipulation in a terminal independent manner.)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Known limitaions:

	A newline will be appended to the last line of a file if it does
	not have one.

	There is a fixed maximum line length on files read.  (Defaults
	to 256, but may be changed at compile time.)

	See gnudiffs for function by function differences.

	DPROMPT code has not been added to ttyio.c for all systems
	where it could be supported.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you have a change to make that you think should be incorporated
into the next version of MicroGnuEmacs, send it to me
(blarson@usc-oberon.arpa or sdcrdcf!usc-oberon!blarson) and we will
consider it.  If it is support for another system or terminal, plan on
being available for beta testing as other changes are made.  If you
can't reach me via a computer network, I suppose you could send a
change to my snail mail address below on 5" os9 format disks or 9
track tape (ANSI variable label or Prime magsav format) or even paper
if your change is very small.  I will not be sending out copies on
magnetic media, so please don't ask.  If you somehow got an incomplete
or non-standard copy, (i.e. missing one of the sys directories
mentioned here as working) complain to who you got it from not to me.

	Robert Larson
	309 S. Alexandria Ave.
	Apt. 117
	Los Angeles, CA  90020