On Wed, 17 Dec 2008 16:26:22 +0000, Invisible wrote:

>>>> It's obvious once you learn to operate it.
>>> Isn't everything? ;-)
>> 
>> As long as you take the time to learn it instead of giving up after 5
>> minutes and declare it "impossible". ;-)
> 
> Actually it was 2 hours and not 5 minutes, so :-P

You know what I mean.  My stepson, when he was 12 or 13, decided to take 
up the flute.  He got frustrated when he didn't become an expert in two 
weeks.

That just doesn't happen, even with natural talent.  There is no 
substitute for actual experience, and that doesn't happen overnight (as I 
constantly taught in classes I taught; I had consultants who wanted me to 
impart 15 years of directory services experience in 5 days.  Sorry, that 
ain't gonna happen).

>>>> But a man page.  "man vim" is a good starting place on a modern *nix
>>>> system for learning how to use vi.
>>> I'm pretty sure when I tried that, it told you how to invoke vi and
>>> all the command-line switches, but not how to actually work the
>>> editor. (A bit like the man page for GCC not telling you how to write
>>> C programs.)
>>>
>>> (Also, I'm almost cetain it was vi, not vim.)
>> 
>> The current man page is pretty good.  vi = vim, they're the same
>> program now.
> 
> I'm just astonished that after all the editor wars, there still isn't a
> Unix text-mode editor that's actually *easy* to use, that's all...

vi *is* easy to use.  I use it daily.  You think I'd use something that 
was difficult to use?

But there are plenty of other choices - emacs, pico, nano, joe - all text-
mode editors, all with different interfaces so you can pick one and use 
it.

Jim

Post a reply to this message