Dan Goodman wrote:
PS vi rules, if you take the time to learn how to use it. [...] And the time to do so is a lot less than the time to learn the Wordstar-like multi-key sequences of Emacs.
OK, I'll bite. You wanted it, you get it... ;-) :-) I know vi -- both the original and vim -- better than almost any hard-core vi fans that I ever met. Actually, those who know vi better than I do, are no vi `fans' but proficient vi users who knows the deficiencies of their tool and are therefore no fans any more. I learned vi back in 1984, and met Emacs in 1988 or so, and use both until today. But: Emacs was a revelation, and it still is. vi is just an editor. Emacs is not an editor, but a working environment -- that's the whole difference. Back then, getting rid of a modal interface was like heaven -- I had enough of them before, when I had to worked with MVS and BS 2000, no need to repeat that on Unix.
"Real hackers know how to use vi, even if they prefer Emacs. But if you > really know vi, what do you need Emacs for?" ;-)
You know how vi is pronounced, do you? "Why?" Read the classic, `Tog on Interface', and get an enlightenment how user interfaces should be designed. Please, no modal interfaces in a thing as essential as a development environment. Btw, tongue-in-cheek, I don't know what you mean with `multi-key sequences', the days of Escape-Meta-Alt-Control-Shift are long gone; nowadays one uses the mouse or has adequate bindings to one's function keys -- just as in vim. In vi, I have more often to use : and some ex command than I use M-x and a function name in Emacs.
Plus, if you have to get on many different machines, many of which you don't control, depending on Emacs leaves you on the dock when the ship sails, at least part of the time. I have yet to find a Unix, POSIX-like, Linux distro, or other non-M$ system that didn't have a fully functioning vi on it,
I beg to differ. As Wikipedia already tells: In a 1984 interview Bill Joy explained that, at Sun, he used an early desktop publishing program, called Interleaf; when visiting labs outside Sun, he used plain old ed. Although vi was almost ubiquitous, he could not count on the local version working the way he expected. However, ed was never modified, so he could count on making it work without stumbling. Or, from my personal experience: You obviously haven't been in many troubleshooting environments where one has a Windoze system without putty, and some suits breezing down your neck that you shall solve the problem with the multi-million Euro Unix system that doesn't run properly since 4 weeks and where they tried to solve the problems with their outsourced Indian provider and didn't succed? Lucky you. Not that Emacs would help here, but that's exactly my point. If I would restrict myself to something that works in all environments where I regularly have to work; I would need to restrict myself to ed, sed, and awk. (And yes, I know ed, and can use it properly. Since, as you should now: ed is *the* standard text editor; see http://www.dina.dk/~abraham/religion/ed-standard for reference.) 0.75 :-) Joachim -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Joachim Schrod Email: jschrod@acm.org Roedermark, Germany -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org