Date: 25 Nov 1999 11:35:54 -0500 From: Edward Kovarski <edwardk@digitalized.com> To: "Damon M. Conway" <damon@chiba.3jane.net> Cc: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>, Ben Smithurst <ben@scientia.demon.co.uk>, Alfred Perlstein <bright@wintelcom.net>, James A Wilde <james.wilde@telia.com>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Programmers' editor? Message-ID: <873dtucyvp.fsf@nyctereutes.digitalized.com> In-Reply-To: "Damon M. Conway"'s message of "Wed, 24 Nov 1999 10:41:43 -0600" References: <009901bf35ee$d892ef60$8208a8c0@iqunlimited.net> <Pine.BSF.4.21.9911231240360.4557-100000@fw.wintelcom.net> <19991123153032.60087@mojave.sitaranetworks.com> <19991123211822.B2618@strontium.scientia.demon.co.uk> <19991123181858.20266@mojave.sitaranetworks.com> <199911241641.KAA26946@chiba.3jane.net>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
I would have agreed with your comments a few years ago when I shared the same sentiment about xemacs. Unfortunately back then I didn't know any better. :) Annoyance was not the correct word when I first fired it up. It was more like an aptitude test for anger management class. It didn't help that my keys were not properly mapped either. To make a long story short, I didn't take to XEmacs at the time and Gnus was even more a mystery with many single key commands. I simply did not bother to put the time and effort into learning it, as I have done before for vi or anything else for that matter. Fast forward a few years and now I live within XEmacs. I read my mail, browse usenet, search the ldap servers, send/receive instant messages via AIM (tnt), fire up the coffee machine and most importantly edit files. Emacs is not an editor per-se. It is a scalable working environment and all that power comes at a price, a gradual learning curve. If you simply want to edit small rc files then even vim is "big, slow [and an] overkill". The topic however was a Programmers' Editor which XEmacs suits very well. Besides, a plain vanilla gvim doesn't really tip the scales on the light side either. On my box xemacs loads in at just about 6.5mb vs 4.5mb for gvim. The standard bundled vi loads in at about 1mb. [Note: This xemacs is compiled with all the graphic, sound and ldap libs.] Speaking of overkill. I would still recommend that most users start out with the bundled vi editor. It doesn't offer any of the extensions that VIM has but at least it will give you a base of knowledge that applies to other platforms. Starting with vim will make you more reliant on its specific features, just as x/emacs does, which are then useless on any boxes with don't have it installed. All in all, there is no wrong choice as each edits files correctly. They just differ in their approach and functionality. Choose whatever is most appropriate to your working needs and programming languages. /e Damon M. Conway <damon@chiba.3jane.net> writes: > > i have...it's big, slow, overkill, and annoying. > > that's just my opinion, i could be wrong. :) > > nomad > > -- > Damon Conway > Black Rock City Ranger...Riding the edge of chaos > "Ana Ng and I are getting old, > but we still haven't walked in the glow of each other's majestic presence." > -- TMBG To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?873dtucyvp.fsf>