The Modernization of Emacs

[Martin Gregorie]

Twisted wrote:
> This seems to be a closer analogy with emacs versus normal Windows
> text editors.
 >
Windows text editors are not normal: most are devoid of all but the most 
primitive functions and are further hampered by having an interface that 
required frequent time wasting hand transfers from keyboard to mouse 
because, if they provide keyboard equivalents at all, these are 
remarkably unmemorable and/or undocumented.

Ask anybody who used early versions of Word and you'll  hear just how 
much faster Word for DOS 5 was than any of its Windows incarnations. 
This was because all commands were keystrokes so a skilled typist could 
keep both hands on the keyboard all the time. WinWord's interface is a 
clunker by comparison.

As for documentation, lets look at vi. Not a great editor, but every 
*nix variation has it installed and any fool can learn to use it in 
about 2 hours flat and it does at least have good pattern matching.

Can't find its documentation? Never heard of manpages ("man vi") or 
apropos ("apropos vi")? My copy of vi understands ":help" and tells you 
so if you start it without any arguments.

Amongst its benefits are that you can do anything its capable of by 
using only a standard QUERTY keyboard plus ESC - no function keys, etc 
are needed - which can save your bacon if somebody misconfigured your 
console or the computer is dieing. Beyond that it has user-configurable 
KEY BINDINGS so you can also set it up to suit both yourself and that 
fancy keyboard in front of you.


> Arguably even the weird controls are superior in some
> way -- but only if you got used to them,
 >
You mean that Alt-Esc or Windows-e aren't weird? How long is it since 
you tried to use Windows with a dead mouse? There are a set of arcane 
keystrokes to replace anything you can do with a mouse but I bet 99% of 
windows users don't know any of them apart from TAB and CTRL-ALT-DEL.

> The above applies equally to vi and its derivatives, if not more so --
> vi is like taking that same already-wacky car with the two separate
> throttles and adding, in a fit of quaint nostalgia, the need to
> actually crank-start its engine. ;)
>
If you can't learn enough vi to get by with in half a morning you're 
probably well out of your depth here on comp.lang.java.programmer.

Oh, I forgot: you don't read manuals so you ARE out of your depth.

-- 
martin@   | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org       |