This is the `doc/HISTORY' file of GNU eev.
Copyright (C) 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification, are
permitted provided the copyright notice and this notice are preserved.
Author and version: Eduardo Ochs, 2005jan04
Latest version: <http://angg.twu.net/eev-current/doc/HISTORY>
      See also: <http://angg.twu.net/eev-current/README.html>
                <http://angg.twu.net/eev-current/>



A Brief History of Eev
======================

At the end of 1994 I started running Linux(*) on my computer at home.
I figured out that the system -- rather, the whole *NIX world -- had
two main editors: vi and Emacs. vi gave me the impression that I would
need either a fantastic memory or fantastic hacking skills to learn
its keys, and that most people learned it by having either the right
books or by having friends who could teach them; I had neither of
those things. Emacs also looked difficult, but it seemed to have
another attitude -- like "here's all the information we have now,
here's fifty ways of inspecting and changing the system and there's
more around, here are all these extensions that we considered
useful..." -- and, besides, its manuals were a joy to read, and I
already knew a bit of Lisp. I went the Emacs way.

After a few weeks of using it I had something roughly equivalent to
this in my ".emacs" file:

  (defun ee-goto-position (&optional pos-spec)
    (cond ((null pos-spec))		; pos-spec=nil: don't move
	  ((numberp pos-spec)		; pos-spec=number:
	   (goto-char (point-min))	; go to the pos-spec-th line
	   (forward-line (1- pos-spec)))
	  ((stringp pos-spec)		; pos-spec=string: go to the
	   (goto-char (point-min))	; first occurrence of the string
	   (search-forward pos-spec))
	  (t (error "This is not a valid pos-spec: %S" pos-spec))))

  ;; Like find-file, but accepting a pos-spec
  (defun find-fline (fname &optional pos-spec)
    (find-file fname)
    (ee-goto-position pos-spec))

  ;; Like Info-goto-node, but accepting a pos-spec
  (defun find-node (nodestr &optional pos-spec)
    (if (Info-goto-node nodestr)
	(ee-goto-position pos-spec)))


  ;; Save the region in a temporary script
  (defun ee (s e)
    (interactive "r")
    (write-region s e "~/ee.sh"))

  ;; Same as ee, but will execute in verbose mode
  (defun eev (s e)
    (interactive "r")
    (write-region (concat "set -v\n" (buffer-substring s e) "\nset+v")
		  nil "~/ee.sh"))


I learned that I could execute these temporary scripts in a way that
would let them affect the enviroment of the current shell -- so that
they could change the current directory, the shell variables, etc. It
was with `source ~/ee.sh'. Then I learned how to run `. ~/ee.sh' with
fewer keystrokes: `alias ee=". ~/ee.sh"', and then type just `ee'
would do the job. I added that alias to my .zshrc file.

By the way: zsh looked more experimental, and thus possibly more
buggy, than the other shells, but it came with a file comparing the
syntaxes and features of several shells and showing how to do in zsh
everything that other shells could do. For someone like me, who didn't
know which features to expect from a *nix shell or how to use them,
that was just what I needed. I started using zsh and I'm using it to
this day.


  [Things to write:]
I was sure everyone was using Emacs that way
Eev almost got into Emacs in 1999/2000
Hybrid hyperlinks (eeman)
Stallman/users
eeg, screen, debian-br irc
years stopped (end of PhD) - little feedback
  rubikitch and defadvice
after the end of PhD - rewrite


(*): GNU/Linux, but at that time people used to refer to those things
by using only the name of the kernel... I installed the "Yggdrasil
Plug&Play Linux" CD.



# (find-man "bash")
# (find-man "bash" "source filename [arguments]")
# (find-node "(bash)C Shell Builtins" "`source'")