begin quoting Andrew P. Lentvorski, Jr. as of Fri, Feb 11, 2005 at 12:47:03PM -0800: > > On Feb 11, 2005, at 12:07 PM, Stewart Stremler wrote: > > >This is my major problem with emacs, I suspect. The amount I need to > >memorize is simply boggling. > > Oh, and vi doesn't? Puh-lease. Nope. Didn't say that vi didn't have a lot to memorize. But I can come up with mnemonics for the vi commands (aside from hjkl which I learned from Rogue long before I ever saw vi) and don't have to learn so much at once.
> I've been using vi for over a decade and *still* have to look up the > search-and-destroy syntax because something went weird or I have to > escape some bizarre character (so what is the vi command to replace the > Macintosh end-of-line character with the standard Unix cr-lf? That's > vanilla vi ... not vim ... not vigor .. vee aye). Um, standard in Unix is just LF, it's MSDOS that standardizes on CRLF. The Mac standardizes on CR, just to be different... You're looking for colon (extended command) percent (to every line in the file, although this is redundant in a Mac file since there will be only one line), ess (substitute) slash (delimiter, not important) control-V (next character is literal) control-M (^M) slash (delimiter) control-V (as above) control-M (as if hitting return) slash (delimter) gee (global), right? Now, going the _other_ way in vanilla vi I would have a hard time with... making a mac file out of a unix file. Didn't say my preferred tool was perfect in *every* way, but that's why I like to keep my friends sed, awk, and tr around. :) > Oh, and please > explain to me that fact that one of the first things that every Unix > user memorizes is the sequence to exit vi. The first thing you should memorize on *any* editor is the exit sequence, both with saving and without. I've memorized the emacs exit sequence a dozen times, starting with micro-emacs back in the mid-80s, and I *still* can't remember it for more than a week at a time. > >Plus having to use the control-key for damn near everything. > > Valid complaint. > > A lot of the emacs vs. vi war is actually a modal vs. modeless > flamewar. That tends to be a personal preference. And you can argue that (vanilla) vi is actually modeless -- it's all edit mode with escape-terminated unbounded-text input commands -- and emacs is modal (have to hit a control-key to do *anything*), but that's just sophistry. :) [snip] > >Heh. You mutants with an oversized sinister pinkie finger can do what > >you want -- just stop expecting us normal humans to agree that your > >deviant ways are somehow superior. > > Excuse me. You vi people use that same pinky to reach half the > freakin' way up the keyboard to hit the Escape key every time you want > to do something and you complain about *emacs* people being mutants. :) Actually, I often use my ring finger to hit escape. My work habits tied very closely into vi -- I spend most of my time either entering text, or editing, and not a lot of time switching back and forth quickly. > We emacs people only have to move our pinky from the A key over to the > control key. What's the problem? We don't type so much holding down that key. We hit it, and are done. Of course, with the control key where God Intended I think both camps end up typing all-caps by holding down a shift instead of using caps-lock, but that's okay because it's *supposed* to be painful! > Oh, wait, you're using one of those silly Pee Cee keyboards that has > Caps Lock in the place where the Almighty intended the Control key to > be. So sorry ... Actually, not me. Not if I can help it anyway. > BTW, the true vi hacks I know actually map the ESC key to caps lock. > Even they know that the key left of A should be special under the laws > of Unix and man. Heh. > They have already taken the first step. At some point they will reach > enlightenment and join us in the Church of Emacs. Alll programs evolve until they are shells. All shells evolve until they can read news. All newsreaders evolve into Emacs. > Besides, knowing emacs means never having to learn a new OS. It works > the same on all of them. ;) Don't I realize that! That's why I keep trying to learn emacs. If I ever /have/ to end up on redmondware, I *want* to be able to rejoice in using the EmacsOS with the cygwin tools underneath. -Stewart "Rejected by the Church of Emacs four times now" Stremler -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
