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Re: Etymology of `visiting' files
From: |
Barry Margolin |
Subject: |
Re: Etymology of `visiting' files |
Date: |
Tue, 09 Aug 2016 11:37:02 -0400 |
User-agent: |
MT-NewsWatcher/3.5.3b3 (Intel Mac OS X) |
In article <87lh06bizj.fsf@rudiments.goosenet.in>,
Udyant Wig <udyant.wig@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:
> > The term "visiting" does not show up in a 1978 guide to Emacs (but
> > maybe it was already in use):
> > https://web.archive.org/web/20110723033542/http://www.burlingtontelecom.net/
> > ~ashawley/gnu/emacs/doc/emacs-1978.html#Basic-File_002dHandling-Commands
>
> Thanks for the link. I was unaware of this one.
>
> > It shows up in 1981, in the RMS paper on Emacs:
> > http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs-paper.html
>
> I had checked this paper and also the Emacs manual for TWENEX users
> (AIM-555). Both mention `visiting' but include no rationale for the
> choice. Perhaps the technical meaning (of `visiting') was sufficiently
> similar to regular English usage that it did not seem to need
> explanation.
I think it may also be a bit of a retronym. Emacs has two commands for
opening files: C-x C-f and C-x C-v. They needed mnemonics that
distinguished them, so the first is "Find" and the second is "Visit".
GNU Emacs has abandoned the mnemonic name of C-x C-v.
--
Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
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