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

[Joel Bernstein]

On 13 May 2009, at 20:07, Peter Corlett wrote:

> On 13 May 2009, at 19:04, Joel Bernstein wrote:
> [...]
>> Does it also have a visual selection mode that lets you select from
>> current cursor point to 3 lines down up to the 5th "f" character on
>> the line in half a dozen keystrokes?
>
>> I'm not an emacs user so can't speak for their camp, but vi(m) is  
>> less
>> an editor and more a way to turn your keyboard into a gamepad for
>> navigating and modifying text files.
>
>
> In emacs:
>
> <down> <down> <down> C-s f C-s C-s C-s C-s
>

In vi:

v3j5ff

v = enter visual mode
3j = move down 3 lines (3 <down> also works)
5ff = the 5th f character

and then there are an awful lot of things I could do to or using that  
selection.

It's this sort of meta-feature that both vi/vim and emacs offer to  
combine basic primitive functions (most of which *do* have easy  
mnemonics, like v for visual and f for find) into more powerful  
functions, and of course to store them as macros, which IME the GUI  
editors tend to lack.

I'd quite like to know about GUI apps (of any variety, preferably not  
restricted to editors) where this sort of building up of commands/ 
controls is common.

/joel
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