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From: gollum@well.UUCP (B. Thompson)
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: Re: editor wars ad infinitum...
Message-ID: <1841@well.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 26-Sep-86 22:43:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: well.1841
Posted: Fri Sep 26 22:43:46 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 30-Sep-86 04:57:51 EDT
References: <4122@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Reply-To: gollum@well.UUCP
Organization: Whole Earth Lectronic Link, Sausalito CA
Lines: 33
Summary: Vi has its place, and so does emacs, and so does jove, and so on..


	I've been using vi for about three years now. My previous experience
had been everything from Bank Street Writer (kludge++), the editor for
Action! (an Atari language), Atariwriter, Applewriter, and many others.

	I've tried to use Jove, and I'll keep trying. On pc's, I'm getting
into Brief (Brief vs. Epsilon is a whole 'nother subject that many feel
very strongly about). My point is this: Vi has a lot of power, is mnemonic,
and feels very natural (w for word, m for mark, uppercase for above and
to the left, lower case commands for the right and below). The main
drawback to it is not having windows...that can be a pain sometimes.
However, it has good macro and abbreviation capabilites, an extensive
undo capability, and an excellent way of setting up tags (mark a 
place anywhere with any letter a-z). The buffer capability is also
extensive (preface with any letter a-z), and can be used for easily
transporting text between files. I like being able to give a count
to many commands (such as 5dw, delete 5 words), without having to
resort to some esc-5-esc-delete-word sequence on jove (however it is
done on that editor, it seems to take an awful lot of keys!).

	What I don't like on vi is having 5 files going, and not
being able to easily point at my "args" somehow and switching from
file to file. On the other hand, ctags keeps me happy enough. I also
want windows, and I want to be able to have macros that will take
arguments. I think the main thing that trips people up about vi
is the fact that it is not an "all in one mode" editor. But if you
stop for a moment and consider that once you are in the "command mode"
via esc, you're there! You can then get around very quickly and do
a few commands to manipulate buffers without having to hit any
control-esc-alt-hyper-meta-coke-bottle-shift-sequences! I'm
saying that vi fits in well with peoples natural way of text processing:
write, write, write, change, change, write...people write in a 
moded way, so it makes sense to me to have an editor that works that way.