Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!oliveb!felix!kehr
From: kehr@felix.UUCP (Shirley Kehr)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: vi for the Mac
Message-ID: <66407@felix.UUCP>
Date: 27 Oct 88 14:39:52 GMT
References: <442@edsel.UUCP> <8400037@m.cs.uiuc.edu> <7680@boring.cwi.nl> <16029@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Sender: daemon@felix.UUCP
Reply-To: kehr@felix.UUCP (Shirley Kehr)
Organization: FileNet Corp., Costa Mesa, CA
Lines: 78

In article <16029@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> steve@violet.berkeley.edu (Steve Goldfield) writes:
>In article <7680@boring.cwi.nl> jurjen@cwi.nl (Jurjen N.E. Bos) writes:
>#>In article <8400037@m.cs.uiuc.edu> rudolph@m.cs.uiuc.edu writes:
>#>>
>#>>While in general I certainly prefer Mac style editing to vi, there is one vi
>#>
>#>>[remark that vi can mark locations and jump to them]
>#>
>#>>Anyone have any idea why it hasn't been implemented in any major editors, or
>#>>know of any that do have it?
>#>
>#>Why?  I think the main reason for having marks it the ability to quickly
>#>jump to a certain part of the file.  I find the scroll bar to the right
>#>easier to use, faster, and more powerful.  I never want to _exactly_ jump
>#>to an earlier location, only to about the same place.  A scroll bar is just
>#>what I need.
>#>-- 
>#>  -- Jurjen N.E. Bos (jurjen@cwi.nl)
>
>It seems that you don't do much cut and paste editing. Many's the
>time I want to move a block of text from page 12 to page 5 and
>wish I could type '' to jump back and forth. To use the scroll
>bar, I have to remove my hands from the keyboard, pick up the
>mouse, and scroll two or three times until the appropriate screen
>is visible. Then I have to click on the correct location. Let's
>face it: a mouse is very handy for many kinds of graphical
>manipulations. But for precise editing of text, it is frequently much
>more cumbersome than a command editor. Anyone who has ever had to
>drag two or three times to select just the text to be changed
>knows what I mean.
>
>Steve Goldfield

I don't know what kind of application we're talking about anymore. The
original posting referred to an "editor" which I assumed was different
from a word processor. 

But now, the talk seems to have gravitated to how to get around quickly in
large documents with page numbers, which seems like we're discussing how
to use the mouse in a word processor.

So now, it may depend upon which word processor you use. Getting around and
selecting text using either the mouse or keyboard commands seems like one
of Word's strong points to me. I watch many people here try to drag across
text to select it, but if you spend just a little more effort to learn a
few more selection techniques, you can go pretty fast.

For example, I watched my boss position at the end of a word and hit the
backspace for each character yesterday. I asked him if he couldn't just
double click the word in PageMaker and he didn't know until he tried it.

I regularly command-click sentences in Word, then touch the move key (program-
med with QuickKeys), click on the insertion point, and press Return. Selecting
paragraphs with a double click at its left side seems pretty fast. Once you 
select one word, sentece, or paragraph, dragging automatically moves by the
same amount (word, sentence, or paragraph).

As for positioning, someone suggested putting in what in effect would be
bookmarks in hidden text which you could go to quickly using search. Word
also lets you use the zero on the keypad to quickly go back to the last
place you edited, so it doesn't take too much effort to touch any key to
mark a spot, go get the text you want to move, then touch zero to immediately
be right back there.

Obviously, I've decided to invest a little time in learning how to get
around and select text quickly in Word. If the Mac had a vi style editor
it would probably take longer to learn that - at least for most people. In
fact one look at FullWrite's key commands told me It would be difficult to
use because there is no beginning of line and end of line key command. Those
are my most used positioning commands (1 and 7 on the keypad).

I guess it's really true: for the most part you love what you learned first
and compare everything else to what you already know how to do, rather than
spend a little time learning new techniques. I'm doing the same thing with vi
(which I have to use to write this, but which I've been unwilling to invest
the time to learn more than the arrow keys and e to skip by word).

Shirley Kehr