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Date:      Sun, 30 May 1999 12:42:22 -0700
From:      "Justin Wolf" <jjwolf@bleeding.com>
To:        <freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: Ramblings from a Newbie...
Message-ID:  <004f01beaad4$9b3234a0$06c3fe90@cisco.com>
References:  <19990530022036.A10524@futuresouth.com> <Pine.BSF.4.05.9905301311460.325-100000@bridget.mindriot.net> <19990530105652.A73222@ontario.mooseriver.com>

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Since it's a holiday, I'll add my two cents to this rambling conversation...

> > Yes, and as we all know, Emacs stands for Escape-Meta-Alt-Control-Shift
:)
>
> EMACS == Eighty Meg And Constantly Swapping ;-)

In regards to vi's user-unfriendliness:  I used to use Pico, but as more and
more of my efforts were spent editing files on a Unix machine, I started to
develop disdain for such an underpowered editor (as it's meant to simply
edit email messages for pine, it doesn't really need to be all-powerful).
At first, vi seemed unwieldly... far too many key presses, why aren't there
menus, and where the hell is the online-help?

After struggling with vi for a while and trying to find things in the man
page, I bought the little O'Reilly 'Learning the vi Editor' handbook.  It
taught me most of what I know today.  I can get around vi with enough
comfort that I use it any time I find myself editing things on a unix box.
And vi is small enough that it loads pretty damn quick.  As with Unix
itself, once you learn the basics, you can combine them for amazing amounts
of power.  Now if only it had column cut & paste...

I tried EMacs, even xemacs... I'd have to spend a lot more time reading
documentation and fiddling about just to figure out how to exit to
application (programs of this size are no longer mere 'programs' - they're
applications).  Most of the power of emacs is lost on me... my brain is not
big enough to grasp the concept.  I've heard of people who actually use
emacs as their command-line shell.

I used to edit web pages with notepad.exe... now I use vi.  I'm much
happier. (I still use pine though...)

-Justin




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