It also took
advantage of a gap in the software programming lexicon.
Noting a lack of programs on ITS starting with the
letter "E," Stallman chose Emacs, making it possible to
reference the program with a single letter. Once again,
the hacker lust for efficiency had left its mark.
In the course of developing a standard system of macro
commands, Stallman and Steele had to traverse a
political tightrope. In creating a standard program,
Stallman was in clear violation of the fundamental
hacker tenet-"promote decentralization." He was also
threatening to hobble the very flexibility that had
fueled TECO's explosive innovation in the first place.
"On the one hand, we were trying to make a uniform
command set again; on the other hand, we wanted to keep
it open ended, because the programmability was
important," recalls Steele.
To solve the problem, Stallman, Steele, and fellow
hackers David Moon and Dan Weinreib limited their
standardization effort to the WYSIWYG commands that
controlled how text appeared on-screen.
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