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From: gast@oahu.cs.ucla.edu (David Gast)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: UNIX needs a real text editor
Message-ID: <22009@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Date: 20 Mar 89 03:07:31 GMT
References: <222@imspw6.UUCP> <252@torch.UUCP> <2112@mister-curious.sw.mcc.com> <167@isctsse.UUCP> <48@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> <2036@valhalla.ee.rochester.edu> <3461@silver.bacs.indiana.edu>
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Reply-To: gast@cs.ucla.edu (David Gast)
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
Lines: 36

In article <3461@silver.bacs.indiana.edu> templon@silver.UUCP (jeffrey templon) writes:
>
>Well, now I think that is a little unfair.  THere is a bit of difference
>between having an editor decide that tab means three spaces instead of two
>when you switch modes, and having "l" mean "move over one space" in one
>mode and "stick the letter l into the file" in another.
>
>			jt


But even emacs has modes.  Usually if you type Ascii printing characters
they go into the file and if you type control characters or meta characters
they are treated like commands, but ...

	1) In emacs, there is mode which treats numbers as a count, not
	   a character.  So if you substitute "2" for "l" in your above
	   argument, it still exists.

	2) In Emacs, there is a mode for putting control characters in as text.

	3) In Emacs, usually the Ascii printing chacter that is typed
	   is inserted, I presume that there is a replace mode as well.
	   (I never found it, but I presume it exists, it was always
	   painful having to explicitly delete characters).

	4) There is control-S for search strings (like / for search strings
	   in vi).  This is another mode.  Presumably, there is another
	   emacs mode to do regular expression searching.

	5) There are modes to send something to the shell, for mail, etc.

Show me an editor without modes and I'll show you a weak editor.

David Gast
gast@cs.ucla.edu
{uunet,ucbvax,rutgers}!{ucla-cs,cs.ucla.edu}!gast