History of Emacs, Who Truly Created Emacs?

By Xah Lee. Date: . Last updated: .

How Much Richard Stallman Did in Creating Emacs

the following is written by Daniel Weinreb, Guy L. Steele Jr. and including email archives from the coders at MIT AI LAB in year 1976, such as Richard Stallman, David A. Moon

source is Daniel Weinreb's blog at http://danweinreb.org/blog/rebuttal-to-stallmans-story-about-the-formation-of-symbolics-and-lmi accessed on 2012-09-08.

it spurred from heated debate in comments from Daniel Weinreb's article about history of Lisp at MIT AI Lab. History of LISP, Emacs, Symbolics (Daniel Weinreb Rebut Richard Stallman)

name abbrevs:

dlweinreb Says:

November 28th, 2007 at 2:37 am

I wasn't going to keep this origin-of-Emacs topic going, but today, Guy Steele today sent a very long piece of mail to me, Richard Stallman, and Adrienne Thompson, in reply to mail from Stallman, who asked Guy:

Weinreb says that Moon did something important (though he is vague about what) in starting Emacs. If Moon was involved, he must have hidden it from me. Do you know what's going on here?

First some preliminary comments from me:

- Secret decoder: GLS is Guy Steele, RMS is of course Richard Stallman, DLW is Dan Weinreb (me), Moon is David Moon, ED is Ed Schwalenberg who was beta-testing along with me, CBF is Charles Frankston, EAK is Earl Killian, ECC is Gene Cicarelli, RMF is Bob Frankston, and JLK is John Kulp.

- I agree that I'm somewhat vague on precisely which things Moon did. I remember that there was a part of “?” called the “loader” that was part of the underlying infrastructure, and I recall that Moon developed this initially. Evidently Stallman improved upon it later (see first email below), as he surely improved upon everything as time went by. Moon also worked on the “MM macros”, which meant “commands that had descriptive English names instead of being one or two keystrokes”, corresponding to today's Meta-X commands. The MM macros feature was brought into “?” from one of the Emacs predecessors, sometimes called TMACS, that was developed and used by Moon, CBF, EAK, and ECC. RMF had already figured out how to extract the MM commands from TMACS and insert them into TECMAC, one of the other Emacs predecessors, and I borrowed (copied) that code from him. It soon became clear that what we had here was a mess, and the right thing to do was to all join forces and come up with a single code base that had the best of all the ideas in it. Thus was the project born that turned into Emacs.

- The reason the mail looks funny is that it predates the Internet; some of what you see is Arpanet mail, and some (like the first one) is internal ITS mail.

- Guy sent PDF files of scans, which I have no way of posting here, but he quotes all the important stuff below.

- It would be even better had there been email from the previous week, but, gee, you can't have everything.

And now, here's the mail from Guy Steele. I think this is the best information we are ever going to get, and that this is the last word on the topic.

— —

I think all of us have been relying on our memories, which can fail in various ways. Last time around I checked my file folder of notes about Emacs, which has some useful information, but not a lot about who did what. Now I have some more information to offer. I'm going to quote email I received during the last part of 1976. The attached PDF files are scans I made today from my paper archives of that email. I may have committed typographical errors in quoting the email below; if in doubt, consult the scans.

On October 23, 1976, RMS sent this email to GLS:

RMS@MIT-AI 10/23/76 02:11:39
To: GLS at MIT-AI
I HAVE HACKED ?MACS A LOT. IT NOW HAS
AN IMPROVED LOADER MACRO AND SUITABLE PURIFY MACRO.
THE PURIFY MACRO HAS BEEN DEBUYGGED, AND WINS;
I HAVEN'T TESTED THE LOADER ON THE RESULT THOUGH.

Comments: (a) At this point the new proposed consolidated set of TECO macros for real-time editing was called “?”. I had chosen this name as a kind of stubborn joke, because a non-alphabetical character as the name of a program was just a little harder to invoke from DDT; also, it followed the example of the @ program, which had just recently taken over from the @ command in TECO for creating program listings — another project that I started and then RMS markedly improved over the years. However, the @ program was useless without command-line arguments, so no one ever wanted to type @^K to start it, whereas it was desirable to start a frequently-used editor by typing a single-character name and then ^K, and I knew it, and I was being a bit mulish about it.

(b) This email was sent just to GLS. From the fact that he was reporting progress to me, I infer from this that RMS did not yet regard himself as the “owner” or “principal hacker” of this project. (While the AI Lab culture did support the notion that in principle anyone could hack on any program, in practice it was also well-understood that certain people had superior knowledge about certain programs, and that superior knowledge was consulted and paid due respect. I wouldn't have dreamed of hacking on TECO without consulting RMS, and he would not have hacked on LISP without consulting JONL or me.)

On October 29, 1976, GLS sent this email to RMS:

GLS@MIT-AI 10/29/76 15:20:31
To: RMS at MIT-AI
CC: GLS at MIT-AI
See .TECO.;?VARS > for a ? variables macro.
It has some hair for pushing and popping
variables as well as getting and setting them.
Suggestions appreciated for reducing hair.

Comment: Six days later, I am still working on the implementation. I think that explodes the pretty myth that the project was handed over to RMS literally overnight. (However, as we will see, it did occur fairly quickly, as such things go.)

On October 31, 1976, RMS sent this email to GLS:

RMS@MIT-AI 10/31/76 01:15:37
To: GLS at MIT-AI
I MOVED ?VARS INTO ?MACS
UNDER THE NAME ^^ VARIABLES (THAT'S 2 UPARROWS).
I PARTIALLY DEBUGGED IT; READING AND WRITING WORK BUT
NOT PUSHING AND POPPING.
TO GET A ?, DO :XT ?;
THEN DO MMLIST COMMANDS$$ AND MMLIST REDEFINITIONS$$.

Comment: I believe that by this point I thought of RMS as principal hacker on the project, or at least the most active contributor; I'm feeding him little chunks of code as I am able, and he does the integration.

The next day:

RMS@MIT-AI 11/01/76 03:53:45
To: GLS at MIT-AI
m.v now works completely.
List commands implemented.
lisp indentation command works (meta-I).
MIDAS, TECO and LISP editing modes defined.

Comments: RMS still sends me reports on his progress. (The Lisp indentation macro was the “big one” that he and I worked on together in a single ten-hour hack session.)

On November 10:

RMS@MIT-AI 11/10/76 21:46:03
To: EAK at MIT-AI, CBF at MIT-AI, GLS at MIT-AI, ED at MIT-AI
To: DLW at MIT-AI, MOON at MIT-AI
Unless anyone can think of a better idea, I think we should
rename ? to E.

DLW@MIT-AI 11/10/76 21:49:07
To: MOON ay MIT-AI, DLW at MIT-AI, ED at MIT-AI, GLS at MIT-AI
To: CBF at MIT-AI, EAK at MIT-AI, RMS at MIT-AI
Another idea is to call it formally “QMARK” with a link
existing for “QM” .

Comment: Note that MOON is among the interested parties. Most of these addressees were implementors of macro packages that were predecessors of ?MACS and had user constituencies.

GLS@MIT-AI 11/11/76 14:43:03
To: MOON ay MIT-AI, DLW at MIT-AI, ED at MIT-AI, GLS at MIT-AI
To: CBF at MIT-AI, EAK at MIT-AI, RMS at MIT-AI
Well, for hack value TS ? ought to exist (yes, you CAN
get DDT to load it under that name!), but E is a good
abbreviation.

Comment: Finally, I capitulate on the name (thank goodness).

Later that day:

GLS@MIT-AI 11/11/76 16:39:50
To: CBF at MIT-AI, EAK at MIT-AI, ED at MIT-AI, MOON ay MIT-AI
To: DLW at MIT-AI, RMS at MIT-AI
CC: GLS at MIT-AI
My current tentative suggestions for ? command placement
are in TGQ;?CHARS > on AI. (They aren't even completely
what I want, now that I have talked with RMS, but at
least some desirable features are listed even if they aren't
where we want them to be.)

Comment: The key bindings are still in flux, and I'm still involved in determining those key bindings.

MOON@MIT-AI 11/11/76 21:28:51
To: INFO-E at MIT-AI
You are now on the INFO-E @ AI mailing list. (Used to be called INFO-?).

Comment: Moon creates the INFO-E mailing list. Looks like the name change has been agreed upon.

RMS@MIT-AI 11/12/76 03:53:31
To: INFO-E at MIT-AI
LOTS OF COMMANDS MOVED.
NEW PURIFIER (USING FO) NOW UP, GIVING
TREMENDOUD INCREASE IN SPEED, ESPECIALLY FOR DOCUMENTATION
MACROS.

DLW sends several messages to (BUG EMACS) and (BUG E); he and Moon are the principal testers of the new editor, shaking out many bugs.

MOON@MIT-AI 11/14/76 04:40:49 Re: Changes
To: INFO-E at MIT-AI
[1] RMS's many bug fixes and changes of this afternoon compiled and installed.
[2] MM LIST FILES renamed to MM LIST LOADED FILES
[3] New MM macros:
LIST FILES compact directory listing
LIST DIRECTORIES compact, sorted listing of M.F.D.
LIST TECO FS FLAGS compact, sorted listing of Teco FS flags
DUMP RMAIL don't try it!
RMAIL temporary access to rmail – seems to have
a few bugs. In particular, don't try
to get the minibuffer inside rmail's ^R
command – you'll be sorry!
EDIT ..D edit the delimiter table
VIEW Q-REGISTER try to view any type of Q-register
[4] Note that MM LIST should be an acceptable
abbreviation for most such commands. Note that RMAIL needs
to be rewritten.
[5] For those who don't know MM DIRED has worked for a few days.

Comment: From the fact that Moon first cites RMS's work in item [1] and then goes on to cite other changes to EMACS, this seems to imply that these other items are things Moon was working on (and they strike me as his style of things to work on).

MOON@MIT-AI 11/14/76 19:14:06
To: (BUG E) at MIT-AI
M.I lossage – if you are using a multicharacter command, e.g. ^XB..Z,
and type part of it fast, you end up seeing at the bottom of the screen
something like “.:z” – it seems the right thing would be to save up all
non-echoed chars in a string in ..0 (which q-r gets reset at the right times)
and echo them all when echoing starts. And flush the colon. This would
also allow hairy commands to use long prompts by putting a string in ..0
before calling .I the first time.

Comment: This message testifies to Moon's intimate knowledge of the inner workings of TECO and the fledgling EMACS.

RMS@MIT-AI 11/16/76 22:05:41
To: INFO-E at MIT-AI
EMACS^K and E^K now exist, and run links to EMACS;TS >.
:NT EMACS; will still load up from scratch.
Note that the file [PRFY] is no longer loaded by default.

Comment: the birth of EMACS as a stand-alone program under that name (and the name E)! (Though note that the (BUG EMACS) mailing list had already existed for a couple of days, and that the previous way to start the macros was to say “:NT EMACS”.)

gls@MIT-AI (Sent by BRS@MIT-AI) 11/17/76 12:44:06
To: (BUG E) at MIT-AI
Grumble! If CTRL-META-[ is gobbled, then I can't use it to insert Q!

Comment: This was a reference to the Crunchly cartoon of 5/19/1973. (You can see it in _The New Hacker's Dictionary_.)

MOON@MIT-AI 11/17/76 23:32:45 Re: Featurama EMACS
To: INFO-EMACS at MIT-AI
MM TECORD $ teco command $
^R puts current line at top of screen, ^U^R at bottom,
^U^U^R puts top of current defun, paragraph, etc. at top of screen.
Warning- this may get moved to another character.
Multiple consecutive deletes act like one as far as the ..K ring
is concerned; thus one ^Y will get it all back.
^K accepts negative arguments just like meta and control-meta versions.
A few bugs fixed.

Comment: Moon is still involved.

RMS@MIT-AI 11/19/76 04:49:41
To: GLS at MIT-AI, MOON at MIT-AI, DLW at MIT-AI, ED at MIT-AI
I have just written some winning Meta, Control, and Control-Meta
prefix characters, and I am desperately in need of a good idea
of where to put them. The Meta and Control-Meta prefixes should
be easy to type on ordinary terminals. One idea is to put them
on ^W and ^L, but then 1) where to put ^R Kill Region, and
2) does ^L^L clear the screen or move left?
A possible place for the Control-Meta prefix is ^C,
which has the advantace of being easy to remember for
an ex-TECMAC user.

Comment: RMS confers with me, DLW, Ed, and Moon on design.

On 11/27/76, RMS sends out a long message to INFO-E reporting mane changes he has made. By this point RMS appears to be doing most of the work, and I think Moon is doing much less implementation work.

On 11/30/76, RMS send a message to INFO-E, and two more on 12/05/76, and three more on 12/11/76.

On 12/10/76, JLK sent a message to INFO-E announcing 18 or 19 new features. Comment: John Kulp (an implementor of one of the predecessor macro packages) was actively involved in EMACS development as late as December 10.

My conclusions: (1) Clearly, by the end of 1976 and thereafter, RMS was doing the bulk of EMACS development work, but it was not an “overnight” takeover. For a period of seven weeks, anyway, he had some implementation help from others (at least GLS, MOON, and JLK), and certainly had help with design and debugging from these and others (DLW, EAK, ED). He may have become the “principal hacker” more quickly than that, however, perhaps in the space of a week or less; but remember that in the AI lab culture, what I here call “principal hacker” (not a term used at the time) was a “first among equals”, not an exclusive owner.

(2) Moon's involvement was not “hidden”.

(3) RMS is responsible for the names “E” and “EMACS”.

RMS still deserves 99% or 99.9% or 99.99% or 99.999% of the credit for taking a package of TECO macros and turning it into the most powerful editor on the planet, twice (first in TECO and then with ELISP), pouring in enormous amounts of effort and creativity over many years. He also deserves credit for working with the early user community to work out the initial set of key bindings and command names. I don't think RMS has any reason to deny the people who helped him out during the first few months their due share of credit. They gave of their time and creativity freely, in the best spirit of contributing to the community.

–GLS

History of Emacs

my random notes in study of history of emacs. In particular, how much Richard Stallman did.

first, Jamie Zawinski (aka jwz)'s timeline gives a very good outline of the early days.

emacs history timeline jwz
[Emacs Timeline. By Jamie Zawinski. At https://www.jwz.org/doc/emacs-timeline.html ]

In the beginning, 1976, there was TMACS and TECMAC. They are macro packages for the TECO editor. They are the origin of emacs. They were written by David A. Moon, John Kulp, Eugene Ciccarelli, Earl Killian, Charles Frankston, Earl Killian.

Then, there is a project trying to clean and merge them. This project initially have a name of question mark ?. This project, began by Guy L. Steele Jr..

Richard Stallman was early contributor to the ?, working with Guy Steele, and after a month or 2 months, basically became the primary coder, by December 1976.

in around 1976, Daniel Weinreb and Mike McMahon wrote EINE (EINE Is Not Emacs), for MIT Lisp Machine. which later became ZWEI (ZWEI Was EINE Initially) and ZEMACS on Symbolics Lisp Machines. EINE is the first emacs written in lisp, and first with graphical user interface.

In around 1978, Bernard S Greenberg wrote Multics Emacs, written in MacLisp, for Multics.

Around 1981, James Gosling (who created java), wrote Gosling Emacs, in C, for Unix. Gosling Emacs is the first emacs running on Unix. It has a embedded language called mocklisp. It has syntax similar to lisp, but does not have lists.

in 1985, Richard Stallman (rms) made initial public release of GNU Emacs. At first borrowed code from Gosling Emacs. Removed mocklisp with a true lisp that rms created.

in summary, rms's role in creating emacs is 2 folds.

1. RMS is very early contributor of the project trying to merge tmacs, tecmacs, etc, that Guy Steele began, and after a month or so, RMS became the main coder. RMS is also the one who renamed the project name of question mark to Emacs, with other's agreement. Guy Steele gave RMS 99% of the credit for his effort and impact.

2. RMS started GNU Emacs, with its own embedded Lisp, few years later. GNU Emacs, borrowed code of Gosling Emacs. But those code are removed in few months, due to threats from UniPress (Gosling sold Gosling Emacs to). (the copyright idea for software, was just made into law in 1980 in USA.)

Note, by the time RMS first released GNU Emacs, there was few full-fledged emacs already, i.e. EINE, Multics Emacs, Gosling Emacs. These precedes GNU Emacs by a few years.

In my opinion, Richard Stallman do deserve to be called the creator of emacs, in contexts of simplicity.

emacs, history