[Sussex] Straw Poll

[Steve Dobson]

Geoff

It's good to be back in rant mode - hope you're enjoying the
ride as much as I.

On 29 April 2003 at 08:24 Geoff Teale wrote:
> > If you're becoming a 
> > Emacs power user then when are you going to replace 
> > "/bin/bash" for you account in /etc/passwd with
> > "/usr/bin/emacs"?
> 
> Well, I doubt it'll ever go that far (though emacs has a 
> perfectly good shell environment), but I have to admit
> that I find it convenient when I'm coding to send and
> recieve mail in the same environment and maybe do some
> simple web browsing.  I think for the experienced Emacs user 
> there are very few things you can't do in that environment
> - it can become very comfortable.

I for one have come to dislike IDEs or any large package that
tries to be all things to all people.  I find that they often
fail at the edges, that they limit the ways in which I can 
solve a problem.  I much prefer lots of little tools that do
one job, but do it well, that I can plug together using make.

> One thing that annoys me about the modern Emacs distribution 
> is that it is so damn large, there is no need for it to be.
> The reason is that it comes bundled with hundreds of modes
> and the lisp source for them - that's great, but, for instance,
> I'm not likely to be using apl-mode.elc or perl-mode.elc
> anytime soon.
>
> All of this could be avoided if they added a feature like 
> "pull new mode from the web and install" (of course you can
> do this anyway, but new users seem to find this daunting).

With this you have my complete support - as someone who just
uses XEmacs as an editor I two don't need 75% of the packages
it ships with.

<snip> 
> Ah yes, but you need to remember you Ctrl-f, Ctrl-b, Ctrl-n, 
> Ctrl-p, Ctrl-e, Ctrl-a, Ctrl-l and of course there Meta-
> equivalents incase you ever come across a happy-hacker
> keyboard or a Sun Type 2 keyboard :)

But they're becoming part of my muscle memory too.

>                                               and it would 
> assume that vi is the _standard_ editor for UNIX, it isn't,
> do a `man ed` and find out :)

I never mean to say that vi is the _standard_ editor, just that
it was the standard _visual_ editor.  For some damaged *nixs
when it comes up in single user mode (before init is even 
started) then you don't have the luxury of some of the 
advanced facilities (like the termcap database).

<snip>
>                  you could point out that notepad has all
> the functionality of a puppy-poo hat.

But for simple editing of text only file it does the job.
ed is available on Unix in much the same way.  

>                                       Microsoft could
> equally point out that notepad is a very intuitive application
> (once you have adopted the Windows paradigm for how an app will
> operate) vi and ed are not.  For this reason, once again, I
> think is a good thing that most new users will see their
> standard editors to be one of the following three:
> 
> in KDE - Kedit
> in Gnome - Gedit
> in the console - Nano

Agreed

> ... ultimately if you need the power functionality of vi or
> Emacs then you're likely to be capable of installing them. 

Again (boringly) agreed.  But I fell that [X]Emacs is a solution
that finally found a problem (how to edit files better).  When 
you look under the covers of [X]Emacs (as I know you have) you 
see that it is not an editor but a text manipulation environment.
As such it can be turned to handle anything that is textual in
nature.  On the other hand vi was a solution to "how to edit on
these new fancy VDUs".

Okay, I admit that the above argument is week, but for some reason
I can't explain I've fallen in love with  vi and how it works:
  1) All but the last line of the screen is devoted to displaying
     text (Emacs uses at least two).
  2) Your hands say rooted to the keyboard - no flying of to a mouse
     every five seconds (yes [X]Emacs does this too which is why
     I also use XEmacs).

> Sure.  I have no problem with vi.  I just feel it is odd that 
> people still set out on the journey that leads to groking vi,
> when it is so much simpler not to.  

But isn't this very similar argument to "We'll do this in VB - 
it'll be easier than learning C++/Java/...".  I grant you that
WYSIWYG editors are simpler to learn (even use cold), but they
never offer the same power.  But WYSIWYG should be spelt WYSIAYG:
What You See is _All_ You Get.  [X]Emacs does try to provide both.
The menu system provides an intuitive interface while elisp and 
the command interface is there for real power.  But how many
people ever get beyond the menu?

By being less intuitive vi forces you to go out and find out more
about it.  Most vi users (and I include myself in this) learnt
from other people.  Tips are passed on from user to user.  Judging
from the number of Word documents that I've had to edit where the
original author has not used section number tags but done section 
numbering by hand I think intuitiveness is over rated.  They 
encourage one never to get beyond the level of novice.
    
<snip>

> > vi is a beast; a beast to be timed.  
> 
> OK, I'll set my stopwatch ;)
>
> That is among the more humourous typo's I've seen recently.

Damn spell check bit me again :-)
 
> Yeah, exactly.  The first time I used vi was on a bash scripting
> course run by SCO (prior to that we'd used Nedit at Uni), in the
> context of that course it seemed like a big waste of time, but as
> the boxes we had only had vi we had no choice - there was no way
> at that point to see that vi was a powerful tool.  The only
> reason I ever gave vi another chance was because other UNIX
> people kept requiring me to use it and I learnt a few tricks 
> along the way.

Thanks, my big point in this rant thread.  Non-intuitive interface
give rise to more advanced users.

Steve