Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!joshi From: joshi@cs.uiuc.edu (Anil Joshi) Newsgroups: comp.editors Subject: Re: vi Alternative Required Message-ID: Date: 11 Dec 90 19:09:05 GMT References: <1616@ukpoit.co.uk> <7471@castle.ed.ac.uk> <4448@lib.tmc.edu> Sender: news@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (News) Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana Lines: 79 jmaynard@thesis1.hsch.utexas.edu (Jay Maynard) writes: >I seriously doubt that either vi or emacs could be made to emulate the ISPF >editor, much less perform the other functions that ISPF does. TSO programmers >spend more of their time in ISPF than emacs users spend inside emacs. It has That exactly was my point. But I didn't say it this well. The system tools all put together give a more programmer/user friendly and easthetic results on IBM Mainframes than on the UNIX systems. The only UNIX clone that even came to close to the functionality of ISPF is VOS on Stratus. If somebody says that all these things are fitting in together just by conincidence, I won't believe them (think about with what probability that could happen). It is not just serendipity - it is a lot of planning and research into how they can be integrated well with each other. Only in the UNIX world, I see this disturbing trend of haphazard development without some common goal in sight. With cute names like awk, GNU or some cute feature like "How to put Latex trademark into my document?" which have no wide usage (some of the statements in the Latex Manual irritate me to the limit) or would require tremendous amount of programming knowledge (or regular expressions or whatever) or both. You may ask why I am talking about UNIX in this NewsGroup. It is because of the following reasons. 1. As I already said before, editor, according to my gut feeling, is the most used tool on a computer. 2. vi and emacs both follow in the foot steps of general UNIX philosophy of software development - "To heck with the user -- We are buddy-buddy with the power user/programmer. I'll help programmers write more and more utilities, more and more system software stuff, I'll put in this cute feature in here that is going to give the programmers so and so". What about the end-users? 3. Please (this is an impassioned plea) do not make the mistake of underestimating/sneering at the users. Please listen to them. If they don't like something there must be a reason for it. If they wanted vi to look like ISPF Editor (or more globally UNIX to look like MVS/TSO/ISPF) then there must be some truth in what they are saying. If there are only UNIX users (as the case very welll might be wherever Tom is working), then they would not have had a chance to see som of the better things that are there in the market. The places where they do see (I forget the name of the person who posted the original "vi alternative required") more than one, the choice definitely was not the UNIX editor. You as a programmer most probably would be able to bully them around and say that "Look! You either use this or else I am not going to help you anymore." Can't we (collective) have a more productive solution than this "tough luck. You can't do this" attitude? >an astonishingly rich set of functions, and doing them all would be quite a >task. Even the editor is markedly different from the typical Unix screen- >oriented text editor; it's a cross between a screen editor and a line editor, >and some things are more easily done as line commands (entered in fields at >the beginning of each line) than as functions in the text portion of each >screen. The model of interaction with ISPF was designed around the >capabilities of the 3270-series CRTs instead of character-at-a-time async >terminals. >The original poster will be better advised to use dte, a WordStar-like editor >that appeared recently in comp.binaries.ibm.pc - but with Unix source as well. That is another problem - all these WYSIWYG stuff. They are not quite WYSIWYG and at the same time are quite cumbersome to use. >-- >Jay Maynard, EMT-P, K5ZC, PP-ASEL | Never ascribe to malice that which can >jmaynard@thesis1.hsch.utexas.edu | adequately be explained by stupidity. > "...flames are a specific art form of Usenet..." -- Gregory C. Woodbury Anil Joshi (I am not a spokesperson for any of the hardware vendors. These opinions are mine and mine only. I am proud to have them.) -- "Whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves. If what we are now has been the result of our own past actions,then it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in the future, can be produced by our own present actions. how to act." - Vivekananda, Late Nineteenth Century Indian Philosopher