Warp wrote:

> : and it's a very powerful text manipulation interactive tools.
> 
>   I didn't say it's not powerful. I said that it's incredibly user-unfriendly.

Must have been written by one of the Blender authors :)

-- 
Ken Tyler

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Warp wrote:
> 
>   It seemed to compile and run without problems in this Sun Ultra 5 with
> Solaris 7.

Good. Especially if you prefer Emacs and nevertheless tried to
compile it. Thank you.

Let's try not to start a flame war. I'm just trying to keep it
fair to Vi(m).

>   However, I have never understood these vi editors. They are the most
> user-unfriendly editors I have ever seen.

They're newbie-unfriendly, not user-unfriendly (just like Unix).
Vim and I are good friends.  :-)

>   - When you start emacs and give it a file to edit, it opens the file and
> lets you edit it right away, as any text editor would do. That is, you can
> write text, delete text and so on, as it's usual with a text editor.

Same with Vi(m). You can delete text right away (with the d key),
change a part of it (with the c key) and even insert some new text
(with the i key)!

Granted, the fact that it doesn't start in insert mode is confusing
the first time. Vim can start (and stay) in insert mode though.
There's even a "evim" which starts in this mode (stands for easy Vim).

>   - If you have modified the text and try to exit (if you can figure out how
> to exit, which has been made incredibly difficult by default), it asks if
> you want to save the file before exiting and gives you the easy choice of
> pressing 'y' or 'n'.

So does Vim. Vim stands for Vi Improved, for a reason.

>   - If Emacs is run under X, it automatically opens an X window with enhanced
> capabilities (because it's not anymore restricted to what a terminal can do).

gvim (GUI Vim) comes along vim. You can also start Vim and type
the ":gui" command when you're bored of your xterm.

>   However, these vi editors are just incredibly user-unfriendly. You just
> CAN'T use them right away. It's completely impossible:

That's almost true. I was lost the first time. Though, in Vim, if
you start it without a file to edit (just "vim") the text on screen
tells you how to get help and how to exit.

Vim btw has one of the best documentations around (unlike Vi).

>   - When you start it and give it a file to edit, you can't edit it right
> away. Pressing characters only give beeps, pressing enter does nothing but
> move the cursor a line down. And there's absolutely no hint about how could
> you possibly modify the text.

It depends on the characters you type. Try dG (delete till end of file).
That said, yes, you need at least to know some basics. Vim has a tutor
that teaches by practice enough commands to get around in Vi(m). It also
has a very good (and new) User Manual.

>   - Of course exiting the whole editor has been made incredibly difficult,
> even more difficult than in Emacs. Also if you somehow have manage to modify
> the text and somehow discover how to exit, it just refuses to exit.

I don't think ":q" is harder than CTRL-C CTRL-X (is that right?).
And if you modified the file, the error message explains that you have
to type ":q!" to exit and lose your changes.

>   - When run under X, it doesn't start in X mode by default. At least in the
> X mode it's easier to exit (just close the window; it even asks in a
> user-friendly way if you want to save).

See above.

-- 
 Adrien Beau - adr### [at] freefr - http://adrien.beau.free.fr
Vi has two modes. One in which it beeps, one in which it doesn't.

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Ken wrote:
> 
> Warp wrote:
> 
> > : and it's a very powerful text manipulation interactive tools.
> >
> >   I didn't say it's not powerful. I said that it's incredibly user-unfriendly.
> 
> Must have been written by one of the Blender authors :)

Remember the only true word processing system? VT52 + TeX + vi

-- 

      __  __ __  __  _
|  | /  \  /  / |_  /  |/
\/\/ \__/ /_ /_ |__ \_ |\

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Francois Dispot <woz### [at] club-internetfr> wrote:
: Remember the only true word processing system? VT52 + TeX + vi

  If you had said X + LaTex + Emacs, I would agree.

-- 
#macro N(D,I)#if(I<6)cylinder{M()#local D[I]=div(D[I],104);M().5,2pigment{
rgb M()}}N(D,(D[I]>99?I:I+1))#end#end#macro M()<mod(D[I],13)-6,mod(div(D[I
],13),8)-3,10>#end blob{N(array[6]{11117333955,
7382340,3358,3900569407,970,4254934330},0)}//                     - Warp -

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Warp wrote:
> 
> Francois Dispot <woz### [at] club-internetfr> wrote:
> : Remember the only true word processing system? VT52 + TeX + vi
> 
>   If you had said X + LaTex + Emacs, I would agree.

Here, we can feel the gap between the generations...
Having the work done right without or with fancy wysiwyg and display.

Well, looks like I prefer the old one, because it need less resources,
so put less stress on a shared system.

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:>   If you had said X + LaTex + Emacs, I would agree.

: Here, we can feel the gap between the generations...
: Having the work done right without or with fancy wysiwyg and display.

  LaTeX + Emacs is not a WYSIWYG system.

  Granted, xdvi allows you to visualize the document in the final form, but
this still isn't WYSIWYG because you don't edit the document directly in
the final form (xdvi is just a viewer, not an editor).
  Of course it's extremely useful to see what you are doing, even if it's
not in real time (^C^C, a couple of seconds of waiting depending on the
length of the document, and then switch to the xdvi window).

  If current computer resources allow you to do this kind of visualization,
why not do it?

-- 
#macro N(D,I)#if(I<6)cylinder{M()#local D[I]=div(D[I],104);M().5,2pigment{
rgb M()}}N(D,(D[I]>99?I:I+1))#end#end#macro M()<mod(D[I],13)-6,mod(div(D[I
],13),8)-3,10>#end blob{N(array[6]{11117333955,
7382340,3358,3900569407,970,4254934330},0)}//                     - Warp -

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Francois Dispot wrote:
> 
> Remember the only true word processing system? VT52 + TeX + vi

I'd prefer a VT510.  :-)

-- 
Adrien Beau - adr### [at] freefr - http://adrien.beau.free.fr
 Mes propos n'engagent que moi et en aucun cas mes employeurs

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Maybe that was misstated by me...
"It probably does/would but I use the IDE Editor..."
There that should be better
Warp wrote:
> 
> Mr. Art <mra### [at] chesapeakenet> wrote:
> : It probably does/would if I didn't use the IDE Editor
> : that comes with the developers install...
> 
>   So Vim doesn't work in BeOS because you use the IDE Editor?
> 
> --
> #macro N(D,I)#if(I<6)cylinder{M()#local D[I]=div(D[I],104);M().5,2pigment{
> rgb M()}}N(D,(D[I]>99?I:I+1))#end#end#macro M()<mod(D[I],13)-6,mod(div(D[I
> ],13),8)-3,10>#end blob{N(array[6]{11117333955,
> 7382340,3358,3900569407,970,4254934330},0)}//                     - Warp -

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On 29 Aug 2001 09:07:29 -0400, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:

<a lot of nice stuff about Emacs>

>  However, these vi editors are just incredibly user-unfriendly. You just
>CAN'T use them right away. It's completely impossible:

I know :) As does anyone who's been using Vim. And also as anyone
who's been using Vim, I know that you may not be able to use it right
away, but if you use it the right way... oh, boy!

* make & run from within the editor
* catch compiler error messages and skip to that line(s)
* jump to and fro tags
* call grep and jump up and down the matches
* char, line & block selection, deletion, cut & paste
* repeat last command (seems simple, but combined with the editing
modes such as insert, delete, change, overwrite etc. it's very
powerful)
* line wrapping & line joining
* auto-space removal & insertion when copying & pasting
* auto-indent (*very* good!)
* etc.

And of course I wouldn't even mention the cons :) You know them
already :)

About the only one I'll mention is that I keep typing 'i'-s in front
of, or 'cw'-s in the middle of everything I edit outside Vim, and I
keep trying to ':w <CR> :mak' my POV scenes in Windows :)


Peter Popov ICQ : 15002700
Personal e-mail : pet### [at] vipbg
TAG      e-mail : pet### [at] tagpovrayorg

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Emacs supports all that and more.

  I don't know how vi editors are configured/programmed, but as Emacs is
an elisp interpreter, you can do almost anything using elisp. This is, in
fact, how most of emacs features have been implemented (eg. autoindentation,
keyword coloring and so on).
  Some examples of things that I have done with elisp in order to make emacs
to work more like I like it are:
  - When pressing page down/up, it doesn't only scroll a page, but also moves
the cursor the same amount of lines that are in a page.
  - When pressing ctrl-up/down, the page scrolls one line.
  - Ctrl-c-u asks for a filename and inserts it uuencoded at the cursor
current location (perfect for including binary attachments to an artice).
  - Ctrl-t removes all whitespaces from the cursor to the next
non-whitespace character (a surprisingly handy feature).
  - Ctrl-y deletes the line where the cursor is.
  And of course pc-selection-mode makes it a lot more usable...

  There are quite lots of games and other fun stuff made for emacs using elisp.

-- 
#macro N(D,I)#if(I<6)cylinder{M()#local D[I]=div(D[I],104);M().5,2pigment{
rgb M()}}N(D,(D[I]>99?I:I+1))#end#end#macro M()<mod(D[I],13)-6,mod(div(D[I
],13),8)-3,10>#end blob{N(array[6]{11117333955,
7382340,3358,3900569407,970,4254934330},0)}//                     - Warp -

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