From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Sep 12 18:49:12 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id SAA25176 for hackers-outgoing; Fri, 12 Sep 1997 18:49:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: from colonel.42inc.com (colonel.42inc.com [205.217.47.81]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id SAA25169; Fri, 12 Sep 1997 18:49:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from jal@localhost) by colonel.42inc.com (8.8.5/8.6.12) id SAA25594; Fri, 12 Sep 1997 18:48:38 -0700 (PDT) From: Jamie Lawrence Message-Id: <199709130148.SAA25594@colonel.42inc.com> Subject: Re: ATTN Emacs users; new Zile release To: jmb@FreeBSD.ORG (Jonathan M. Bresler), hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1997 18:48:38 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <199709121602.JAA13216@hub.freebsd.org> from "Jonathan M. Bresler" at "Sep 12, 97 09:02:58 am" X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL22 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > Jamie Bowden wrote: > > > > On Fri, 12 Sep 1997, Aled Morris wrote: > > > > Does anyone here actually get the point that a newbie can't use emacs > > anymore than they can use vi? I hate ee as much as the rest of you, but > > it's small, and it tells the newbie which keys do what, which vi and emacs > > don't do. > [..] > but why make them learn ee key-bindings, and then when they > move on to a better editor force them to learn a new set of > key-bindings? that's just torturing the poor unsuspecting > newbie. vi key-bindings are not an option--a modal editor > will confuse the daylights out of them. so lets make > emacs key-bindings the system default for ee. I don't mean to confuse things, but I don't know that that's best. Emacs is superior, hands down. However, vi can run in places where emacs can't. I'm a sysadmin and what's worse, only seem to have enough brainspace for one editor, so I only use vi, even though emacs is fully configured on every system I use. Learning a new editor when your system is hosed is the only thing worse than learning a new editor. My point is simply that consistency is what matters. If someone is installing FreeBSD, they are implicitly committing to a fair amount of learning. The point should be to make it easier to learn the most important points first, and let them focus as they will later. My $.0x02. -j, mainly a lurker. > jmb >