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From: c60c-3ds@web-1b.berkeley.edu (John Kawakami)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: UNIX needs a real text editor
Message-ID: <21490@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 11 Mar 89 05:43:45 GMT
References: <7324@boulder.Colorado.EDU> <9059@claris.com>
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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For the record: I like both vi and emacs/JOVE/GNUemacs about the same.  I like
them much more than "word processors" for most applications because most of
the text I deal with is code or unformatted text.  If you do different types
of editing, you need different editors.  That's that.

What would be nice to have is a small editor that can automatically format
source code the way you want it, and without lots of hassle (GNUemacs is 
_not_ small!).  It should also be able to do rudimentary real time syntax
checking, so a stray letters don't blow a compile.  A larger buffer for the
line on the bottom of the screen could give me more information on matching
parens, errors, text marks, search strings.  Maybe even better support for
better hilighting esp. on color monitors.

Another significant development will probably be natural language commands
that neophytes (read, non hacker/programmer/superuser) can use.  Imagine,
someone doing a _real_ search without ever learning what a regexp is.

                  John Kawakami    c60c-3ds@web.berkeley.edu