Newsgroups: comp.editors
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!m.cs.uiuc.edu!joshi
From: joshi@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Anil Joshi)
Subject: Re: Xedit is better than vi and emacs
Message-ID: <1991Apr4.033238.9089@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL
References: <2197@pdxgate.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 4 Apr 91 03:32:38 GMT
Lines: 52

jonr@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Jon Edmund Richards) writes:



>            My boss made the statement last week that, in many ways,
>          Xedit is better than vi and emacs.  We argued about this
I think your boss is right.
>          for awhile with the end result that by Friday I have to
>          present a paper either supporting my belief that Xedit
>          has outlived its usefulness or a description of how Xedit

You would not be able to do this. vi hasn't lived for long 
yet ironically it has outlived its time.

>          surpasses my favorite Unix editors.
What is your favourite unix editor?

>            In my opinion, Xedit is a dinosaur and should be as much
Just by saying that it is a dinosaur doen't make it so. Just by saying
that vi is short for visual editor doen't make it so. I still fail to
see how vi is a visual editor. Could somebody please explain this to 
me? In what way xedit is not visual and vi is anymore visual.

>          a part of computing history as those punch cards that the
>          professors tell us about.  

That's not true.

>            Does anyone have any good supporting arguments I could
>          provide?  I would love nothing better than to convince my
>          boss that it's time to learn vi or emacs.

It's time to unlearn vi or emacs.

>            I read this news group almost daily and once in awhile I
>          see postings by Xedit users so I know they are still out
>          there in the world somewhere.  Can any of you explain to me
Again if you are looking for number of vi/emacs users vs number of 
xedit/ISPF users the latter group outmnumbers the former by a very wide
margin.
>          the advantages of Xedit and why it's a good editor?   
Best thing to do would be to go through the IBM manuals on XEDIT, REXX
and vm/cms to see how it is better than vi/emacs. The documentation is
ample and very definitive replete with examples. The same cannot said
about either vi or emacs.

Anil
joshi@cs.uiuc.edu
-- 
"Come the (computer) revolution, all persons found guilty of such criminal
behaviour will be summarily executed, and their programs won't be!"
- Press, Flannerty, Teukolsky and Vetterling