Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!mayoff
From: mayoff@cs.utexas.edu (Robert Mayoff)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Quote from new book
Message-ID: <1046@grit.cs.utexas.edu>
Date: 18 Jan 91 01:07:04 GMT
Organization: Dept of Computer Sciences, UTexas, Austin
Lines: 29

Here's a bit of fuel for the emacs/vi debate.  This is a quote from a new book
I bought entitled _System_Performance_Tuning_, by Mike Loukides.  It's
a Nutshell Handbook from O'Rielly & Associates.  This is from p. 54, in
the "Some Tricks for Users" section.  The footnote is part of the
quote.


- Virtually all incardations of the popular emacs editor are real hogs:
they use a lot of memory and a lot of CPU time.  If you can convince
your users to use vi or some other editor,* you will gain a lot of
ground.  Most windowing systems, including SunOS, have some kind of
built-in editor.  These build-in editors tend to be underused; Sun's is
quite useful.  If you look through UUNET sources, you may find some
public domain versions of emacs that have been written to minimize CPU
load.  If you feel like experimenting, try one of these.
---
* One of this book's reviewers commented: "Fat chance!"  If you go this
route, you have your work cut out for you.  emacs users (including the
author) are a loyal bunch who would rather flame than switch.  And
emacs is an incredibly versatile editor.  But the rewards for getting
users to change are significant.


I showed this to an emacs devotee where I work.  His comment: "That's
one book I'll never read!"
-- 
/_  rob		<mayoff@cs.utexas.edu>
 /_ Fun things to do with UNIX (#2 in a series):
  / echo "rsh `hostname` -n source eat.cpu &" > eat.cpu; source eat.cpu