Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!spool2.mu.edu!news.cs.indiana.edu!att!linac!midway!gargoyle!chinet!les
From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: vi for power users
Message-ID: <1990Dec11.171724.4565@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 11 Dec 90 17:17:24 GMT
References: <110093@convex.convex.com> <1990Dec10.051430.12025@chinet.chi.il.us> <110178@convex.convex.com>
Organization: Chinet - Public Access UNIX
Lines: 56

In article <110178@convex.convex.com> tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) writes:

>>If you don't build it in, you are going to have a heck of a time figuring
>>out the piece you want to manipulate in the other tool.

>I will stifle my urge to preach much on tool philosophy again.  If you
>won't learn tools, you cripple yourself.  Like using cc without lint.

But you didn't address the point about how to pass the necessary info
to the other tool.  In the relevent case (manipulating arbitrary rectangles)
you need 4 coordinates for the source of the block and one for the
destination in the case of a move.  If I have to count lines and characters
I might as well just retype it in the first place.
What I really wanted here was a set of macros to help with this, but perhaps
even that can't be done without putting in-band markers into the text.
 
>"Very good" may be too strong.  If you can't teach your secretary the
>following awkly method, you should consider replacing him with someone
>more trainable, since I wonder what else they can't learn either.  I know,
>it sounds condescending again.  The truth is, I've never once met a
>secretary whom I couldn't teach this stuff to, and I have taught a good
>number in my day.

You've had a sheltered life.  I have to deal with other people's secretaries
where replacement is not an option, plus temps who already know word
processing using word processing programs.   I have taught some of them
vi, but now that word processing programs handle everything except
full regexp substitution I won't do it again.  It's not a question of
whether they can learn, but one of why they should spend time learning
a less than optimal way to do something.

>    1,10!awk -F<tab> 'print $1, $2, $3, $5, $4, $6'
>
>I'll bet your secretaries could handle this.

Perhaps, but they shouldn't.  When a tool exists that lets you mark
the corners of the area and destination using normal editor motion
commands and has a simple command syntax for the move, then the
philosophy that says to use the best tool for the job must insist
on using it.

However, I didn't intend for this to become a flame against vi.  I
like vi for programming and uses where visual formatting is not
important.  I was hoping that someone would come up with a way
to use vi itself to do those two operations (paragraph reform and
rectangle manipulation).  I do realize that arbitrary rectangle
movement (slide a column down as well as over) would be pretty
difficult, but perhaps someone could manage some macros for
column swaps on the same line range like:
:2,6s/\(...\)\(...\)\(...\)/\1\3\2/
so that you wouldn't have to count the lines and dots.  Or maybe
even something that would write some commands out to a tmp file
and then :source it. 

Les Mikesell
  les@chinet.chi.il.us