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Path: utzoo!linus!security!genrad!decvax!tektronix!ucbcad!notes
From: notes@ucbcad.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.emacs
Subject: Re: EMACS Usage - (nf)
Message-ID: <647@ucbcad.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 3-Nov-83 10:52:47 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbcad.647
Posted: Thu Nov  3 10:52:47 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 6-Nov-83 22:04:13 EST
Sender: notes@ucbcad.UUCP
Organization: UC Berkeley CAD Group
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#R:cca:-601000:ucbesvax:2800001:000:1722
ucbesvax!turner    Nov  3 02:33:00 1983

	We have dozens of people here (esvax at U.C. Berkeley, a machine
shared by EE and ME departments), and emacs comes and goes, usually
living in /tmp when it's around, and used by at most 3 people out
of a user community of over 100.  These people need emacs when their
"other" systems are down, or overloaded.  The documentation can be
found by perusing their personal directories.

	Everyone else (myself included) uses vi, or ed/ex.  I like vi
OK, and am still learning a thing or two about it five years after
starting to use it.  But then I seldom read more than the Vi Quick
Reference.

	I played with Gosling emacs, but got frustrated.  The quick ref
page helped some, but I lack the patience to plow through the on-line
tutorial, which is slow and confusing, or to read the manual, which is
only in computer-readable form here.  (When it's around.)

	I am doubly frustrated in that I have a sense of the power of
emacs after five years of going out to the edge of what vi can do and
thinking, "oh yes: to do that you would need a built-in language
interpreter--rats."  (Modelessness, on the other hand, has never struck
me as an intrinsic virtue.)

	My experience with learning new systems is that there is an
order of magnitude speed-up in having someone close at hand who can
tell you how to do things, what you did wrong, and what you should
have read before you tried to do something a little tricky.  There is,
unfortunately, no such person around here.  Since I dislike bugging
people on other machines for help, or publishing my ignorance on
USENET, I'm frozen out until I have a free week or two (hah!) that
I might devote to learning the basics of a new editor.
---
Michael Turner (ucbvax!ucbesvax.turner)