Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!snorkelwacker!bloom-beacon!athena.mit.edu!jik
From: jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: vi editor enhancement request
Keywords: vi display emacs
Message-ID: <15948@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Date: 16 Nov 89 20:07:17 GMT
References: <456@tron.UUCP> <5530@ethz-inf.UUCP> <20668@unix.cis.pitt.edu>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens)
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lines: 37

In article <20668@unix.cis.pitt.edu> yahoo@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Kenneth L
Moore) writes:
>The big deal though is that emacs is "universal".  We currently have 3
>versions of emacs (that I know of) one on the VAX, one on our Ultrix and
>one on our Suns.  I currently switch from machine to machine with very
>little difficulty.  Caveat: A few of the commands are slightly
>different.

  Emacs is "universal"?  Two questions about this:

1. Why is emacs more universal than vi, if different versions of emacs
   have different command sets, while vi is almost completely (I don't
   want to say 100% because I'm not a vi user, so don't know for sure)
   identical across platforms.

2. Why is emacs more universal than vi, if emacs is NOT shipped by
   default with most Unix systems, while vi IS shipped by default with
   most (if not all -- anybody here work on a system that doesn't have
   vi :-) Unix systems?

  If you're going to cite being "universal" as a reason to choose a
particular editor, I'd say vi has emacs beat quite soundly in that
area.

  One more question:

3. Why do you have different versions of emacs on your VAX, Ultrix and
   Sun machines is GNU emacs will compile for all of them?

>It is difficult to change editors but in this case it is worth it. IMHO.

  Now *this* I agree with :-)

Jonathan Kamens			              USnail:
MIT Project Athena				11 Ashford Terrace
jik@Athena.MIT.EDU				Allston, MA  02134
Office: 617-253-8495			      Home: 617-782-0710