On 2022-07-20 11:14 a.m., Joe Zeff wrote:
On 7/20/22 05:54, George N. White III wrote:
On early unix systems, terminals were the only user interface. At that
time, vi was a big improvement over ed. Many early unix users
learned vi, and now still find it available by default on most linux
systems as well as macOS.
Yes. I remember that well. However, there are other editors
available for a terminal now that are far easier to use and don't mung
the output so that Linux newcomers don't have to learn the arcane
syntax of vi, but so many of them think they have to. Maybe Linux
would spread easier and faster if newcomers weren't forced to do
things the hard way now that it's not needed, and that's what I was
talking about.
Hmm, that line of thought opens a really rusted can of worms. Since
80-90% of "newcomers" use Windows and their fingers are programmed for
Windows keystrokes and mouse actions, maybe the Linux desktop should be
a look-alike instead of just being better. However, only 5% of
"newcomers" use Macs, so we should not bother to cater to them. Sorry,
but I just don't buy it. The "make it like Windows" line of thinking is
why I'm not happy with Gnome and systemd and a few other critical
package groups that are going down the wrong path.
There are a lot of reasons why people pick their favourite editor - mine
is vi (not vim), because (a) my fingers are programmed for it after
almost 50 years of using it, (b) there are noticeably less keystrokes to
get the job done compared with emacs, code, etc, (c) unless you only use
it in a trivial way, it is quite a bit more powerful than almost all GUI
editors that I can think of, and (d) unlike most other editors, unless
the filesystem damage is extreme, it works when your machine is in trouble.
However, if you like some particular editor, why do you not simply
change the EDITOR env variable in your .bashrc or kshrc or whichever
other preferred CLI shell, and then YOUR default editor overrides the
system default. Do not ever set it systemwide in /etc, since (d) above
will bite you when you least expect it.
Just my 3 cents...
--
John Mellor
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