Ahha! A religious argument to join!
<troublemaker mode>
Years ago, after having learned 3 or 4 user-friendly (?)
editors and word processors (WordStar, Magic Wand, Pi,
Word Master, and one I wrote myself), I had occasion to
learn the CP/M version of ED.
I took the trouble to learn ED because it came with every
CP/M system, regardless of whatever else came packaged
(e.g. WordStar, Perfect Writer, etc.), kind of like EDLIN
was shipped with DOS.
ED did not have a "visual" mode -- if you wanted the
on-screen display updated, you had to tell it to do that.
It was arcane. It was stilted. It was unforgiving (there
was no "undo" feature). But ... it had real power.
You could make sweeping or surgical changes with just a few
keystrokes. You could create scripts that would automate
certain actions.
It had certain things in common with the other editors by
the same name, and with VI as well (though I didn't know
that at the time).
The common thread for editors of this kind was (and is) that
you are either commanding it, or you are giving it input.
Another thing in common was that only the very simplest of
keyboards was assumed -- truly minimalist design.
The guy(s) who wrote this thing were constructively lazy:
given the design parameters (no special display features on
the terminal, no special keys on the keyboard) they came up
with an editor that got you from "here" to "there" with
very little typing overhead. An elegant answer to a set of
nasty problems:
* you have no arrow keys; how do you move the cursor?
* you have no function keys; how to you implement search
and replace? Copy/cut and paste? File handling?
The VI (visual) editor extended the concepts of the basic
line and character editor to include real-time screen updates
of the editor's commands, but the basic design constraints
still held: minimal keyboard, minimal terminal capability.
It's still arcane. It's still stilted. It's still (in the
basic implementation) unforgiving. But ... it has REAL
power. And it comes with every flavor of Unix and Linux.
And it's available (free) for every other platform I know of.
Its best incarnation may be VIM (also available for all Unix
and most other platforms).
As a person who has written text editors, I can say the VI
editor is a piece of genius; so, too, its descendants.
You may not want to use VI as your mainstay editor, but take
the time to learn it. No, it doesn't do EVERYTHING, but it
will be on every *nix system you use. I also like pico and
a couple of others but, short of EMACS, you will find few
others with the power and elegance of VI.
</troublemaker mode>
At your service,
~~Garry
----- Quoted Content -----
> Concerning the user unfriendly editor, vi for Unix -- there
> are several ``enhanced'' versions of vi that are both more
> powerful than vi and more user friendly as well: They
> include some operating modes that allow one to do simple
> editing without knowing a lot of commands, and they have
> gui versions that run in X windows or other Unix windows
> that can be used much like DOS edit.
>
> The most well known perhaps are Vim, and Elvis. Vim is
> often included on Linux distributions and worth looking for
> (e.g., whereis Vim <RETURN> or which vim <RETURN>).
>
> Howard Schwartz
Powered by the Email PIM - Info Select - www.miclog.com
To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with
unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message.
Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies.
More info can be found at;
http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html
