[Gllug] ed vs emacs/vi, was: ed vs emacs, was: OpenMoko Neo Freerunner

[Nix]

On 16 May 2009, David Damerell spake thusly:

>                        Emacs menus and the like are cute, but not
> really of much practical use once you have a decent set of finger
> macros.

They are sometimes useful when you install something new, to see what's
available (but I tend to read the elisp source directly instead: you
can't miss anything then).

But in general, you're right.

>          Sometimes I'm running Emacs locally and, yes, technically I am
> using the GUI version; but I am using it exactly as I would the curses
> version over ssh.

Not exactly. Both Emacs flavours have the ability to distinguish many
more key combinations under X than on a TTY: the distinct between
control-A and shift-control-A is invisible on a TTY, and you don't have
a chordable meta key (you have to hit ESC first) nor hyper and super
keys.

Plus, of course, X has more colours and multiple fonts and emacs-w3m can
display images in webpages and so on. This makes a fairly big difference
to usability, at least to me.

> I detect an enormous straw man lumbering into view.

Our flame is not hot enough: it will not burn.

VI SUCKS MSWORD ROOLZ AND YOUR MOTHER WEARS ARMY BOOTS AND PREFERS EDLIN

--- there, that should help.
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