Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!bbn!rochester!ur-tut!joss
From: joss@ur-tut (Josh Sirota)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: EMACS better than Vi?
Message-ID: <1987@ur-tut.UUCP>
Date: 6 May 88 16:53:34 GMT
References: <449@novavax.UUCP> <10000003@snail> <52207@sun.uucp> <1197@udccvax1.acs.udel.EDU>
Reply-To: joss@tut.cc.rochester.edu (Josh Sirota)
Organization: Univ. of Rochester, Computing Center
Lines: 52

In article <1197@udccvax1.acs.udel.EDU> fowser@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (Scott Fowser) writes:
>I am interested to know why so many people prefer EMACS to Vi.  I
>decided to try it out, but from what I see in the tutorial, it seems
>that most of the commands must be preceeded by a control or an escape.
>If this is the case, using EMACS sounds quite inconvenient.
>
>One feature about vi that I like is the ability to keep you fingers in
>one place during the whole editing session, whether inserting or
>editing.  Having to press escape to leave insert mode is inconvenient ...
>
> [ridiculous way of getting out of insert mode described ]
>
>With this your hands can stay in about the same position for almost the
>whole editing session.
>
>I assume EMACS must have some more advanced features that give it an
>advantage over vi in some situations, but the only ones I can see are
>windows and that it is free.  I would be interested in hearing the
>advantages of EMACS for just basic editing, since I am willing to
>switch to EMACS if it really is better.

Well, these things are ALWAYS matters of personal opinion.  But ...

As for being preceded by control or escape, well ...  Things aren't
PRECEDED by control, they're hit in addition to control.  That means
that I also never have to let my fingers leave the keyboard ...  the
left pinky merely sits perched over the control key and when I want
to do something it just hits it.  It's really second nature at this
point, much like using SHIFT.

In terms of the Meta-keys (escape-prefixed commands), yes, it's a two-key
process.  But it's no big deal.  At least I never have to go in and out
of insert mode and remember whether or not I'm in it.  Whenever I want to
insert I just type letters ... and if I want an editing command, I just
hit control-whatever or ESC-whatever.

In EMACS, all functions have names, and for some there are keys that you
can type.  Any command can be invoked by name, and there are many more
commands than there are keystrokes.

In general, I find I can be MUCH faster in emacs than I can in vi.

I'm sure that lots of people will agree with this and have many more reasons.
I think that EMACS does have a lot of powerful functions that vi doesn't,
but I won't try to list the ones I use just in case vi really does have them
and I just don't know about it ...

Josh
-- 
Josh Sirota
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