rfc569.txt

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Network Working Group                                   Mike Padlipsky
RFC 569/ NET-USING Memo 1                                    NET-USING
NIC # 18972                                           October 15, 1973



             NETED: A Common Editor for the ARPA Network

BACKGROUND

At the recent Resource Sharing Workshop, there was a somewhat
surprising degree of consensus on what I had anticipated would the
least popular aspect of the my "Unified User-Level Protocol" proposal:
A number of the attendees agreed without argument that it would be
a good thing to have "the same" context editor available on all
Servers -- where "the same" refers, of course, to the user interface.
We even agreed that "NETED" seemed to be a plausible common name.  In
view of the fact that the rest of the proposal didn't seem to capture
anybody's imagination, though, it seemed to be a useful notion to
separate out the common editor and make it the subject of a
stand-alone proposal.

My resolve to come up with the following was further strengthened at
the the organizing meeting of the Network User Interest Group, which
followed the Workshop.  Being primarily concerned with user issues,
this group was downright enthusiastic about the prospect of a common
editor.  Indeed, this proposal has been reviewed by the group and is
endorsed by it.

REASONS

The need for a common editor might well be obvious to many readers.
They are encouraged to skip this section, which is for the benefit of
those who don't already see the light.

In the first place, it's almost axiomatic that to use a time-sharing
system, you have to be able to create files (/"datasets"/"segments").
Even if you're only using the Network to send "mail", you'd still like
to be able to create a file separately, so as to be able to edit it
before sending.  And if you want to write a program -- or even make a
"runoff" source file -- you simply must be able to use some editor
command on the system at hand.

Unfortunately, there are even more editors than there are systems;
and each one has it own conventions and peculiarities.  So "Network
users" (who use several Servers, as opposed to those who use the
Network only to access a particular system all the time) are faced
with the unpleasant chore of developing several sets of incompatible
reflexes if they want to get along.  This can certainly be done.  It
has been by a number of members of the Network Working Group.


NETED SPEC                                                        p.2

The real kicker, however, comes when we consider the needs of those
users -- who are coming into the Network community in ever-increasing
numbers -- who are not professional programmers.  They just want to
get some work done, "on the Net" (that is, irrespective of which
operating system they might be talking to).  They are likely to be
appalled rather than amused by having to learn a dozen ways of getting
to first base.  Therefore, it seems clear than not only do we need a
common editor, but we also need a simple common editor.

CHOICES

Simplicity is not the only criterion for rejecting the apparently
"obvious" choice of either TECO or QED.  (That it is a strong factor
is indicated by the old test of "Consider explaining it to a naive
secretary -- now consider explaining it to a corporation president.")
Perhaps even worse is the problem of "dialects".  That is, features
vary across implementations, and settling on a common set of features
(or dialect) is likely to be a very hard task, for programmers tend to
get very fond of their familiar goodies.  Besides, both TECO and QED
have their own strong (/fanatic) advocates, who's probably never be
willing to settle for the other one.  Further, not every system has
both, and implementing the other is a fairly large job even if the NWG
could agree on which (and how much).

At any rate, the difficulties seem overwhelming when it comes to
choosing a high-powered editor as the common editor.  Therefore, I
tried to think of a nice low-powered editor, and it suddenly occurred
to me that I not only knew of one, but it was even fairly well
documented (!).  The editor in question is known on Multics as "eds"
(the same member of the "ed" family of editors which started on
CTSS), a line-oriented context editor (no "regular expressions", but
also no line numbers).  It is used as an extended example of
programming in the Multics environment in Chapter 4 of the Multics
Programmers' Manual, which gives an annotated PL/I listing of the
actual working program.  It is simple to learn and should be quite
easy to implement,  PL/I version serves as a detailed model with only
equivalent system calls and choice of language to worry about.  I urge
its adoption as the common Network editor, to be known on all
participating Servers as "NETED" and/or "neted".

DOCUMENTATION

In view of the fact that if "eds"/NETED is adopted only perhaps a
dozen members of the NWG will actually have to implement one, it seems
wasteful to distributed some 30 pages of the MPM to everyone --
especially since most of the parties concerned have access to an MPM
already.  (Another problem solved by not including it here is that of
whether I'd be violating copyright by doing so.)  The exact reference
is pp. 24-54 of Chapter 4 of Part I of the Multics Programmer's
Manual.


NETED SPEC                                                        p. 3

Anybody who needs a copy can let me know.  Although the emphasis in
the document is, naturally enough, on the Multics-specific aspects, I
believe that the listing is clear enough to serve as a model to
implementors without any great difficulty.  If we do get to the
implementation stage, I'll be glad to try to explain any non-obvious
system calls, either individually or in a follow-up memo.  But even
though we "initiate" where you "open", or we " call los_$read_ptr"
where you "IOT TTY" (or something), it shouldn't cause much trouble.
For that matter, some implementers might prefer to ignore the existing
program and simply work from the function specifications (below).

LIMITATIONS

It became abundantly clear during the course of the review of this
document by the User Interest Group that the limitations of NETED must
be acknowledged (even insisted upon) and explained here.  In the first
place, it must be emphasized that it is not being proposed as "THE"
Network editor.  Rather, it is an insistently simple-minded editor for
two major reasons:  1) it is meant for use mainly by non-professional
programmers, and 2) more important still, it is meant to be extremely
easy to implement.  Therefore, it seems far more important to go with
the published program, with all its warts, than to specify the
addition of new, undebugged features.  The idea is to make it
implementable in man-days by an average to average-plus programmer
instead of in man-weeks by a superstar programmer.

In the second place, the very act of adding new features is fraught
with peril.  To take some examples from the comments I received during
the review phase:  In the first draft, I inadvertently failed to
document the mechanism by which the ability to "go backwards" (i.e.,
to reverse the direction of the current-line pointer described below)
is actuated.  Several reviewers argued strongly for the inclusion of
such a mechanism; but, not knowing it was already "in" the code I
argued -- successfully -- for leaving it out, on the grounds that we
should stick to what's in the existing code, which is known to work as
published.  Even what to call such a new request would have been
debatable -- should it be "-" and become the only non-alphabetic name?
should it be "b" for "bottom"?  should "n" (for "next") become "+"?
And so on.  Although this particular issue turned out be a false
alarm, I've left it in to emphasize the sort of pitfalls we can get
into by haggling over particular "features".  Another familiar feature
is some sort of "read" request so that the file name need not be
specified as an argument to the command.  Then, of course, one would
also want a "create" or "make" request.  And perhaps a file delete
request?  It keeps going on and on.  The point, I think, is that if we
allow ourselves to go into "tinker mode" we could spend as many years
striving to achieve consensus on what features to add as we've spent
on Telnet or FTP ... and still not please everyone.  Therefore, I urge
the NWG to accept the contention that having a working model to use as



NETED SPEC                                                     p. 4

a pattern is more  important than any particular additional features
(even  though I myself find "=" for "what's the current line's
number?" annoying to live without).

RESPONSES

For the benefit of those who don't want to plow through the functional
spec, this seems to be a good spot to indicate what appropriate
responses to this proposal would be.  Ideally, I'd like to hear from a
responsible system programmer at, say, TENEX, CCN, UCSD, UCSB,
AMES-67, one of the DEC 10/50 Hosts, and from any of the experimental
Servers who happen to be interested, that they think it's a fine idea
and why don't I log in next week to try their NETEDs.  Next most
desirable would be agreement in principle followed by specific
inquiries about "eds".  I would hope that haggling over specific
features wouldn't occur (as we're not trying to do a definitive
editor, just an easy, commonly implemented one based on an existing
implementation), but unfortunately I can't legislate such haggles out
of existence.  At the very least, I'd hope to either hear or see
reasoned arguments why it's not worth doing.  As usual, phone, mail
"mail" ("map.cn" in sndmsg, or "map cn" in "mail" on Multics) or RFC's
are the assumed media for responding.

USAGE