Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!noao!arizona!mike
From: mike@arizona.edu (Mike Coffin)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: UNIX needs a real text editor
Message-ID: <10065@megaron.arizona.edu>
Date: 4 Apr 89 01:35:34 GMT
References: <4407@enea.se>
Organization: U of Arizona CS Dept, Tucson
Lines: 19

From article <4407@enea.se>, by sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog):
> Emacs has a word concept, but of no use for me, since it's assuming
> things I don't agree with. (Don't tell me about syntax tables.
> Whether they are useful or not, it was easier write a move-by-word
> on character level instead.)

Move-by-word is not the only use for words; I count over a dozen
commands that do various things to words.  Not only that, but the
natural meaning of "word" changes depending on what you're editing.
(Is a dash part of a word? Not in C, maybe in English, certainly in
Scheme.)  By the time you abstract the concept of "word" away from its
use --- so you don't have to duplicate the code in a dozen places ---
and fix it so it's easily changed --- so you don't have to write a new
word-recognizer for every language you edit --- you will have
reinvented syntax-tables.
-- 
Mike Coffin				mike@arizona.edu
Univ. of Ariz. Dept. of Comp. Sci.	{allegra,cmcl2}!arizona!mike
Tucson, AZ  85721			(602)621-2858