On Thu, Jan 1, 2015 at 1:39 AM, David Seikel <[email protected]> wrote:
> I have a simple test to decide if I like an editor as a result of these > decades of random editor usage. If I can't sit down with the editor > and figure out how to do basic editing and saving in less than a > minute (sans documentation), then in my opinion it's a crap editor. > Both TECO and vi fail this test miserably, though oddly enough I have a > soft spot for TECO. These days, the general assumption is that you can open a file in an editor with "<editor> <filename>", and that once up, cursor keys can be used to move around in the file and that text can be added where desired by typing it at the cursor location and deleted with Backspace or Delete keys. Vi originated in the days when some of those assumptions might not be true. Some early terminals on Unix systems didn't *have* cursor keys or F-keys. The vi command set and separation between input and command modes was a result. Given where Toybox will be used, it's a reasonable assumption folks running the included editor will already know enough of the basics to deal with vi, even if they may prefer something else, so "Can they figure out basic editing and saving without docs" is a non-issue. > killall -KILL vi > > OK, yes I know about :qa as well, killall is much more satisfying. B-) You *could* simply remove vi from your system. :-) > Out of all the editors that I have implemented in boxes, I have used > them all professionally, including the line editors buried inside emacs > and vi. These days I prefer to use mc and mcedit for everything though, > which is why boxes includes mcedit. So I'll dogfood mcedit, the rest > I'll have to rely on others to tell me what I get wrong. We will. The big issue I can see is preserving "moded" editing in vi and dispensing with it in the others. > I have no plans to implement TECO in boxes, vi and ed are already there. C source is available for a port of TECO if anyone wants to build it, but I don't see a need in Toybox. Stallman used ITS TECO as the implementation language for Editing MACroS, the lineal ancestor of Gnu Emacs, because it was what was available. It was a language in which he could implement an editor. It took over as the standard editor at MIT's AI labs, and he realized how successful his efforts had been when he no longer remembered how to do things in raw TECO. We have other languages in which you can write editors now. ______ Dennis https://plus.google.com/u/0/105128793974319004519 _______________________________________________ Toybox mailing list [email protected] http://lists.landley.net/listinfo.cgi/toybox-landley.net
