Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!mips!cs.uoregon.edu!ogicse!intelhf!ichips!inews!iwarp.intel.com!gargoyle!ddsw1!obdient!gagme!grahj From: grahj@gagme.chi.il.us (jim graham) Newsgroups: comp.editors Subject: Re: Re: vi Alternative Required (long posting) Message-ID: <960@gagme.chi.il.us> Date: 15 Dec 90 20:15:07 GMT References: <1005@langtry.cs.utexas.edu> Organization: GAGME - Public Access UNIX of Chicago, Illinois, USA, Earth Lines: 36 >The popularity of emacs arises from it being a free-bee package than >anything else. If one was paying some good $s for it, one would demand >more. IBM sells ISPF for real $s and they spend enough money on >research and continually improve their products. This is true with any >company (be it Apple or DEC etc.). Yeah, I've heard this argument before --- "if you don't have to spend a fortune on it, it can't possibly be a worthwhile thing...." Well, I guess things like Elm, rn, nntp, TeX, X11, etc. are all worthless. :-) I mean, these are all "free-bee" products, as you put it. So, I guess these are all supposed to be worthless? The fact is, vi and emacs are popular because people like them. I happen to love vi, and hate emacs. I have several friends who hate vi and love emacs. I also know people who love xedit (the ibm xedit...not the one that comes with X11). Everyone has their own tastes in editors and user-interfaces. I had this conversation a while back with one of the xedit people I know. I was showing him a dos editor called Qedit (with qedwp config files), which is one of the more popular dos editors. It's a very simple editor to use...you just type away. it has lots of macros (defined in the qedwp config files), etc., and any of these can be re-defined easily. it allows you to use split-screen to edit multiple files or multiple areas of the same file. The response I got was clear --- "ok, so it's easy to use...what good is that? why should I care if it saves me 10 keystrokes per operation? you're just too lazy to do the extra work, so you think this is a better editor...." This was from a *real end user*. Oh well, enough....my phone bill is high enough as it is.... Jim Graham Comments, etc., to grahj@gagme.chi.il.us Flames to /dev/null (one way or another)