Xref: utzoo comp.sources.wanted:10553 alt.sources:1503 alt.sources.d:454 comp.sources.d:4770 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mstar!mstar.morningstar.com!bob From: bob@MorningStar.Com (Bob Sutterfield) Newsgroups: comp.sources.wanted,alt.sources,alt.sources.d,comp.sources.d Subject: Re: Looking for simple screen-oriented editor Message-ID: Date: 13 Feb 90 23:01:34 GMT References: <3100@usceast.UUCP> <14133@s.ms.uky.edu> Sender: news@MorningStar.COM (USENET Administrator) Reply-To: bob@MorningStar.Com (Bob Sutterfield) Organization: Morning Star Technologies Lines: 24 In-Reply-To: sean@ms.uky.edu's message of 13 Feb 90 00:03:05 GMT In article <14133@s.ms.uky.edu> sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) writes: sridhar@usceast.cs.scarolina.edu (M. A. Sridhar) writes: screen-oriented editor ... students who are first-time Unix users, so ideally the editor must be simple to use, with lots of on-line help... It does not need ... all the bells and whistles that emacs, or even vi, does. It is not necessary to have a stripped down editor for beginning users. Simply don't try to teach it to them all at once... For example, vi can be used quite well by learning about 10 commands. Right! For years, humanities froshlings at CMU used Emacs and Scribe for document production with no trouble at all. They learned what they needed and didn't worry about the rest. The horsepower of raw, naked Emacs was lying in wait for them to need it later on, but for starters, they found a modeless editor agreeable enough. If you assume your users are incapable of learning, then you have a self-fulfilling prophesy, and you will have another dilemma when they need to move up to more powerful stuff. Folks prefer to learn one paradigm and accrete other stuff into it, rather than jump around learning new talents as they need more capabilities. Don't impede their later progress by coddling them now.