Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ames!ll-xn!husc6!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!buengc!bph
From: bph@buengc.BU.EDU (Blair P. Houghton)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: vi vs. emacs
Message-ID: <661@buengc.BU.EDU>
Date: 31 Jul 88 18:08:12 GMT
References: <16697@brl-adm.ARPA> <517@uva.UUCP>
Reply-To: bph@buengc.bu.edu (Blair P. Houghton)
Followup-To: comp.unix.questions
Organization: Boston Univ. Col. of Eng.
Lines: 31

In article <517@uva.UUCP> freek@uva.UUCP (Freek Wiedijk) writes:
>In article <16697@brl-adm.ARPA> garvin@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Jay Garvin) writes:
>>	I have
>>	only  a key labeled 'Delete' and   it  puts  out  the ^? character
>>	(Control-question mark). 
>
>Woudn't "control-question mark" be an excellent choice for the help key? :-)

And we arrive in the course of this topic to the reason that I now avoid
Emacs like I avoid rats with bleeding noses.

I once went into the info mode of Emacs, saw the menu of commands you could
give it, and thought "what the hell, I'll just learn a few of these and
flip through the pages here and I'll be able to pick up Emacs a little
easier afterward."  Four years later, battered, bruised, starved, I emerged
from the jungle, having still not found the elephants' graveyard.  I can't
imagine anything more inane than having to learn "Emacs-like" commands
to get the help I need to use and only to use Emacs.  

I have a copy of the Ultrix-32 quick reference guide at my side always,
and it contains the commands for vi, and nobody has come up with an
"undocumented" command that this reference doesn't document, and I don't
need a machete, roadmap, or eight-fingered keystrokes to find something
in it.

Now if I could just get rid of that bug that sometimes toggles me into
insert mode when I'm doing repeated backspacing with the leftarrow...

				--Blair
				  'But what does
				  map S Gi/\<escA\>esc0"ad$dd@a<CTRL/M>
				  mean?'