Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!columbia!rutgers!caip!brl-adm!brl-smoke!smoke!OPERATOR%LLL@LLL-MFE.arpa From: OPERATOR%LLL@LLL-MFE.arpa Newsgroups: net.unix Subject: The Mailer Daemon Message-ID: <4468@brl-smoke.ARPA> Date: Thu, 9-Oct-86 04:55:28 EDT Article-I.D.: brl-smok.4468 Posted: Thu Oct 9 04:55:28 1986 Date-Received: Fri, 10-Oct-86 00:02:52 EDT Sender: news@brl-smoke.ARPA Lines: 86 To: INFO-UNIX@BRL.ARPA Subject: Message of 6-Oct-86 01:24:09 Message undeliverable and dequeued after 3 days: DEVOTO@LLL.MFENET: Disk quota exceeded ------------ Received: from BRL.ARPA by LLL.MFENET; Mon 6 Oct 86 01:24:08-PDT Reply-to: INFO-UNIX@BRL.ARPA Subject: INFO-UNIX Digest V2#227 Date: Mon, 06 Oct 86 02:45:23 EST Return-Path: Received: from BRL-SEM.ARPA by LLL-MFE.ARPA; Mon, 6 Oct 86 01:22 PDT Received: from BRL-SEM.ARPA by SEM.BRL.ARPA id aa06901; 6 Oct 86 3:01 EDT Received: from BRL-SEM.ARPA by SEM.BRL.ARPA id ab06849; 6 Oct 86 2:45 EDT Date: Mon, 06 Oct 86 02:45:23 EST From: The Moderator (Mike Muuss) To: INFO-UNIX@BRL.ARPA Reply-To: INFO-UNIX@BRL.ARPA Subject: INFO-UNIX Digest V2#227 Message-ID: <8610060245.ab06849@SEM.BRL.ARPA> INFO-UNIX Digest Mon, 06 Oct 1986 V2#227 Today's Topics: Re: Modelessness (Was porting UNIX applications to the mac) ----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Robert Reed Subject: Re: Modelessness (Was porting UNIX applications to the mac) Date: 1 Oct 86 19:19:41 GMT Posted: Wed Oct 1 15:19:41 1986 To: info-unix@brl-sem.arpa In article <2637@cbosgd.ATT.COM> mark@cbosgd.ATT.COM (Mark Horton) writes: > >Sorry, Bob, I disagree. Your version of vi (3.7) doesn't show you when >you're in input mode, but mine (3.10) does; so does the MS DOS PC/VI >clone. (It says "INPUT MODE" right there on the bottom line,... This change sounds like a definite improvement and one that I wouldn't criticize without having a chance to see it, but an immediate concern of mine would be how visible this indicator is for someone whose focus of attention is the cursor, not the bottom of the screen. I still might not consider this indication as "obvious." >There's nothing wrong with being moded, it's just a personal preference. I agree that modes are useful and far be it from me to presume that either vi or emacs be considered modeless. My argument was not for the elimination of modes, but for the elimination of modes which demonstrate the two following features: o Their presence is not obvious to the user (whatever this means in terms of visual or mechanical feedback). o The mechanism for exiting them is not obvious. There are features of both vi and emacs that arguably fall within these dictates. The criterion for "obviousness" is necessarily vague, because level of expertise will affect the user's perceptions of natural behavior. Knowing to hit ESC in vi is a learned behavior, just as is knowing to hit ^G in emacs to abort multi-keystroke commands. Neither is particularly obvious if you don't know about them in advance. >Mice and other pointing devices are handy for lots of things, but with >only two hands, you can't keep one hand on the mouse all the time. > >...for a text editor, you can't reasonably input new text with a mouse, >and there's the problem. Agreed. Despite the attractiveness of the "cut and paste" style text editing paradigm, the actual mechanics of using such a system for text editing are cumbersome. That is not the same as saying that keyboard driven editing and cut-and-paste editing cannot be used in concert. Cut-and-paste grafted onto emacs would be a definite wart, but a useful one. Robert Reed, Tektronix CAE Systems Division, bobr@zeus.TEK ----------------------------- End of INFO-UNIX Digest *********************** -------