On Saturday 03 August 2002 11:20, huug wrote:
>Nano is as well known as pico and one doesn't have to know it to be
>able to use it which is exactly why it should replace vi|emacs in
>/root).
First, until this debate began recently, I was unaware of Nano, but
had used pico (as a part of pine) for many years, so to say it is
as well known as pico may be overstating nano's notoriety.
[rant]
If people want to use their computer without knowing anything about
it, there is always "the leading competitor." Playing around at a
superuser command prompt is not for the inexperienced. vi/vim et al.
are tools for the superuser, or at least for the experienced user.
Novices will start out in the relative comfort of their window
manager with it's fluffy, shiny, candy-like buttons and "are you
sure, dearest?" dialogue boxes, and _slowly_ venture bit by bit into
the belly of the beast that it Linux. While they are safely within
the coddling womb of X, they can browse documentation, and pick up
on how to use vi by using vim-X11, and if they never get the hang of
it, they probably won't be doing much venturing out into the stark,
cold blackness of a virtual console, either, for it will frighten
them.
If the argument is that a newbie may have trouble installing his
system, and might need to manually conduct feats of UNIX-wizzardry,
I can only laugh. If the person is capable of that, he isn't a
newbie, and can probably use man to figure out how to use rpm to
install whatever editor he well pleases. If Mandrake is to be for
the new-to-UNIX user, then it is for the rest of us, who have some
experience, to install and test it on any kind of system we can get
our hands on to find the problems before the newbie has a chance to
find them on his own, the hard way. Nano is nice, and for those who
wish to use it in the administration of their machines, I say: "very
well, install and use it as you will, but I will keep with vi/vim,
thank-you."
[/rant]
-Chuck
--
+-% He's a real UNIX Man $-+-------------------------------------+
\ Sitting in his UNIX LAN \ Charles A. Shirley \
\ Making all his UNIX plans \ cashirley (at) comcast (dot) net \
+------# For nobody @------+-------------------------------------+
