Xref: utzoo comp.misc:5466 comp.editors:534 Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!milano!mister-curious!loo From: loo@mister-curious.sw.mcc.com (Joel Loo) Newsgroups: comp.misc,comp.editors Subject: Re: UNIX needs a real text editor Summary: Comment on editors (pro-vi) Message-ID: <2112@mister-curious.sw.mcc.com> Date: 13 Mar 89 16:44:25 GMT References: <222@imspw6.UUCP> <252@torch.UUCP> Organization: MCC, Austin, TX Lines: 81 In article <252@torch.UUCP>, richard@torch.UUCP (Richard Nuttall) writes: > > ABSOLUTELY!!!! > I HATE vi. > > I have only had to use vi in the last couple of months, before that > I have used decent custmisable editors (WYSIWYG) such as > > VAX TPU (a highly customised version of EVE) > APOLLO dm editor > MICROSOFT C5.1 M editor I hope this is not an editor war but honest discussion of pros and cons of various editors. I have used over a dozen of text editors/word processors. My comments might be useful to some: (take note that I came to use vi only recently, it is my LAST and NOT the first editor.) I am a vi convert (in every sense of the word) after using ZMACS (a more powerful extended version of Emacs) on a certain Lisp machine for over a year and almost 8 hours a day everyday. Before that I used the EDT editor on the Vax for three years and TPU for a while after VMS 4.2 was released (yes I am aware of the programmability of TPU.) I had also use for short periods the VED editor (POPLOG editor, highly programmable too), TRS-80 editor (can't recall the name), TECO, RED (on DEC Rainbow), Xedit (IBM mainframe), Apple ][ editor, Sidekick editor, Smalltalk... [Comment: Programmability is a nice concept but don't stretch it too far. I had the experience of spending more time programming an editor than on my work. One complaint about vi is that it has modes. My view is that modeless editors are nice for beginners, but an old-hand doesn't even realize vi has modes; modes become natural to him. Use of the mouse is, again, nice for beginners, but I find it a pain when I was forced to use it in Smalltalk and Macintosh; I just could not do cutting and pasting as fast as in vi (nothing to do with my agility, it is inherent with mice, a lot of hackers will agree with me).] I had use a few text formatters/word processors too. WYSIWYG: Wordstar, MS word, WordPerfect, PageMaker, FrameMaker. Non- WYSIWYG and non-interactive ones: TeX and Runoff (DEC). [Comment: There are advantages for using WYSIWYG text formatters. There are also disadvantages: they are USUALLY slow and not as flexible as TeX or xxxOff; fully WYSIWYG software encourages time wasting since users do a lot of fine adjustments; most 'WYSIWYG software are not fully WYSIWYG and thus a lot of printing prob- lems ...] Finally, vi is efficient in a lot of operations, especially those that we do 80% of the time during an editing session. There are a lot of useful commands predefined so that one does not have to waste time writing his own macros. Contrary to popular beliefs, vi is programmable (though not as easy and complete), I have written some useful vi macros such as cutting and pasting, alter- nate buffers, etc. (If you are interested I will post it after I tidy them up.) Vi has also a good interface to the Unix shell. (For you info, this message is done entirely in vi, using nroff for justification and spell for spelling check.) Vi is extremely popular in Unix systems, every Unix machine has one. I had at one time or another transferred my vi macros file to Apollo, IBM RT PC, Sun, and it works identically. I could start work on a new Unix machine in no time. I even got hold of a vi on IBM PC so that I do not have to use the SideKick editor (and mind you, that was my PC editor for over three years) that was becoming painful when I have to toggle between PC and Unix. Agree that vi need to be improved. There are certain features that should be included (maybe someone can look into this). My advice is: spend more time reading the vi reference manual. Do not be discouraged from using it just because vi has cryptic com- mands. It serves most programming needs just too well. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Joel Loo Peing Ling composed on Mon Mar 13 10:32:46 CST 1989 -------------------------------------------------------------------- MCC | Email: loo@sw.mcc.com 3500 West Balcones Centre Dr. | Voice: (512)338-3680 (O) Austin, TX 78759 | (512)343-1780 (H)