Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!teknowledge-vaxc!mkhaw
From: mkhaw@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA (Mike Khaw)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: Wanted SIMPLE editor and Re: Mail Editor
Message-ID: <23869@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA>
Date: 18 Jul 88 02:57:13 GMT
References: <4452@mit-vax.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Distribution: na
Organization: Teknowledge, Inc., Palo Alto CA
Lines: 29

>>Does anyone know of a deathly
>>simple, entirely intuitive, full screen editor that will work on
>>vt220 terminals, and maybe do function keys and stuff, that might
>>satisfy these users?
> 
> I believe the standard editor that comes with VMS meets these
> requirements; it's called EDT, and it's supposed to be intuitive, easy
> to use, etc.

I can't let this go by without comment.  EDT is probably easier to
learn than vi or emacs, but you need a vt100 style keypad on your
terminal (unless you want to use line-mode or "nokeypad" commands).
Also, while you do eventually develop a feel for using the keypad, it
took me a long time before I could do without a "rubber ducky" overlay
on the keypad or frequently resorting to PF2 (now how intuitive is
THAT, that PF2 gives you help).  I don't consider the keypad "binding"s
particularly logically laid out either.  This isn't the place to get
into it, but EDT (at least the versions I've used in VMS 3.5 through
VMS 4.3) has some pretty infuriating aspects to it.  OK, I'll mention
one:  after a crash, both vi and emacs can recover the file pretty
quickly; EDT can take an incredibly long time to "play back" its
journal file, and it won't let you do it in batch, so you have to waste
an interactive session letting it do the recovery.

Mike Khaw
-- 
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