Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2001 14:22:41 -0500 From: David Leimbach <dleimbac@earthlink.net> To: Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: vi Message-ID: <20010609142241.A424@mutt.home.net> In-Reply-To: <001201c0f113$fc324740$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>; from tedm@toybox.placo.com on Sat, Jun 09, 2001 at 11:42:50AM -0700 References: <3B22198F.CB4908A3@nisser.com> <001201c0f113$fc324740$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>
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> There's more to it than that. vi is very clever about minimal use of cursor > control characters during the file edit. It is possible and comfortable to > use vi to edit a file when connected to the UNIX system with no more than a > 300 baud modem connection. Yeah. Even though I am an emacs person at heart... the above situation warrants minimalism. Maybe I would even fall back into ed or ex :). Editing one line at a time is certainly faster than seeing an entire screen of lines. Composing new code or documents with ed however is a little hairy :). > The big disadvantage of vi is that it's "not like all the other editors out > there" > which I suppose makes it "non-intuitive" (someone one day is going to have > to > explain how human intuition has anything to do with technology, Fagh!) The > other editors make things very easy for newbies with features that get in > the > way of experienced people. vi makes things very easy for the experienced > person by subtracting all the gingerbread that makes it easy for newbies to > use. As a result, vi's popularity tends to be directly proportional to the > experience of the admin. ;-) Not always... If you like LISP [yes some of us sick bastards still exist] then emacs is the way to go... I guess you may end up spending more time customizing your editor than doing real editing but for tinkers [like me] its just part of the fun. VI is awesome though... don't get me wrong.. I like it. As far as human intuition and technology... its a very important and underaddressed notion. For computers to achieve maximum utility the interface must be intuitive. I think PC's will never be as intuitive as say handheld devices and things that completely abstract the "files and folders/directories" to the point where the user doesn't know he/she has such things to begin with. Linux runs on the TIVO... most TIVO owners don't know that... [My boss informed me of this fact so I can't actually verify that :)] Abstraction happens all the time in PC's too. The AMD athlon [and almost certainly the latest Pentium processors] do not actually have an x86 processor but several RISC processors which can translate x86 machine code to their native tongue and do "what an x86 would do" if it had actually been implemented in hardware. This all happens behind the scenes and is of no concern to most people. I am reminded of The Wizard of Oz movie "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!!!". Ahh I begin babbling.... VI kicks ass! [crushes beer can on forehead] Dave [Ted I may be purchasing your book soon :)] > > Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com > Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide > Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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