On Mon 6-Jun-05 5:19am -0500, Allie Martin wrote:
> On 5/6/2005 11:38 PM -0500, you wrote:
>
>> I get around this problem with just a few keystrokes and one
>> mouse click:
First off, I've simplified my interface a bit. All I have
to do is press Win-P and, thanks to PowerPro, I am in Gvim
- configured for email - with the body of my email ready to
edit. When I am done editing, pressing Alt-q saves my edit
buffer to the clipboard and closes Gvim. To finish off, a
Ctrl-V in MicroEd replaces what was there with my edited
text. This is almost as good as built-in support. I
suppose Ritlabs figured that anyone using a programmer's
editor would figure out a way to integrate it - I'm fairly
happy with this solution.
> I used that editor for a while. I installed it, demystified it and was
> impressed. It sort of consumes you, that editor. :) However, it's not
> unlike MicroEd in some ways:
Allie, I have no desire to replace MicroEd - only to
supplement it. Except for its inability to handle double
space sentence separation, and thus reformat, it is very
good at what it does.
> - it's approach is very different and if you get very good at
> it, you'll not want to use anything else.
I'm assuming you mean for email. But even for that I want
more control. For example:
- inserting a text file
- inserting the output from an external program (including
your favorite command processor commands)
- turning on or off "free caret editing" - that's virtual
editing in Gvim
- Operate on columns, inserting and deleting or formatting
text into columns
> - it has an incredibly steep learning curve. However, if
> surmounted, it's knowledge well worth the effort if you do a
> lot of text editing.
Part of the beauty of MicroEd, IMHO, is the very shallow
learning curve to perform quite a bit. Adding QTs gives
even more power. But it doesn't come close to Gvim, Emacs,
SlickEdit, etc. in raw power.
> It made me appreciate MicroEd that much more since I had to be creating
> macros to do some of what MicroEd just does. It actually made me
> appreciated MicroEd that much more. MicroEd is a little gem of a tool
> *specifically designed* for e-mail editing. It will do things with
> quoted text so easily, and give you a WYSIWYG type format of your mail
> without any effort on your part.
Since I use plain text, WYSIWYG is what I get :-) Quoted
text is handled as easily as reply text. Your paragraph
below was reformatted to 60 character text width by typing
gq} on the first line - Gvim speak for reformat paragraph.
> If you do heavy nested replying, where you split and
> splice blocks of quoted material, then MicroEd is
> indispensable. Same for simple lists, banged together
> ASCII tables or similar schematics.
Sure, but the same is true of nearly any good programmer's
editor - without learning another set of commands.
> The only thing I've missed with Gvim for e-mail editing is
> that it ignores the '-' when I create the two item list as
> above. As a result, the second lines are auto-indented. Of
> course, if you have already mastered GVim and use it for
> e-mail, BTW, then no problem. :) However, you'll likely be
> saying the same things of GVim as I'm saying about MicroEd
> if someone were to try Gvim and complain about the way it
> behaves and does things so differently. :)
If all one was doing was writing email - and you didn't care
about the double space, MicroEd would be fine. But for
those of us that program, we need an editor that can
accommodate programming needs. For example:
- Integrate with CTAGS to jump around dozens of
compilation units
- Understand the syntax of the various programming
languages we're using
- Integrate popular scripting tools - perl, python, ruby,
mzScheme, etc - into the editor's internal scripting
- Run compilers or lint tools on buffers or do a make to
build a system and have all messages appear in a window
from which you can jump anywhere in the source tree to
fix things and repeat the process
- Visually "diff" two versions of source code
To integrate a user's editor of choice into MicroEd simply
extends MicroEd. MicroEd can be used for all TB! specific
stuff and most editing functions - while their own editor
can be used for specific needs. It is not a complicated
addition and this feature should be added.
BTW, Allie, Gvim 7 is in alpha - build 81. It supports
internal spell check (and many other new features) and yes,
it skips quoted text :-)
--
Best regards,
Bill
The Wounded Bat 3.5.25 Pro BayesIt! 0.8.1 X-Ray 1.4.0.0 XP Pro SP2 POP3
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