Ooops, just realized this went to both the list, and me:
From: Chris Osborn
On Sep 21, 2014, at 3:39 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
> Epsilon. ("Wasau.=94)
Will it fit on a 360k floppy?
Well, it depends on what OS you're talking about, and which version of
Epsilon.
The one I use (which is circa 1996) is Version 8, which is for Windows 95 and
later, and the .exe file is 261KB, so yes - sort of. You also need a 'state
file', which is all the settings, pre-loaded interpreted code, etc (most of
the 'editor' is actually interpreted code - the .exe file just provides a
system with underlying primitives useful for writing an editor, e.g. support
for buffers, windows, etc), and that's another 180K+. So if you have two
floppy drives, yes. One... not so sure...
I haven't ever tried to run it without a state file, to see what it's like,
but it's probably unusable. But you might be able to make a stripped-down
version whose state file would be small enough to fit on a 360K floppy along
with the .exe. It also has the ability to demand-load code (e.g. if you have a
rarely-used function attached to C-A-^, you can cause that code to be loaded
only the first time you hit C-A-^ - makes the basic state file smaller, and
faster to load), and you could use that to put the code for a lot (all, if you
wanted, I suppose) of the commands on a second floppy.
They did make much earlier ones (I started using it under DOS, back in '87 or
so), and that version is probably smaller, but I don't know how much smaller
(and don't have the ability to go check - I think those files are on 5.25"
floppies, and I don't have a working 5.25" drive at the moment - one more
thing on the to-do list, sigh).
As far as I'm concerned, it really is the bee's knees - I can't say enough
good things about it.
Noel