Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 09:24:27 -0500 From: Steve Tremblett <sjt@cisco.com> To: Anthony Atkielski <anthony@atkielski.com> Cc: Jon Molin <Jon.Molin@resfeber.se>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: DSL PPPoE with 2 NICs Message-ID: <20011116092426.H10055@sjt-u10.cisco.com> In-Reply-To: <004a01c16ea5$469bf650$0a00000a@atkielski.com>; from anthony@atkielski.com on Fri, Nov 16, 2001 at 02:47:40PM %2B0100 References: <002601c16e7f$19509d20$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> <001101c16e98$1867ba60$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <3BF50ACB.F37844BE@resfeber.se> <004a01c16ea5$469bf650$0a00000a@atkielski.com>
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+---- Anthony Atkielski wrote: | I'm just amazed by the awkwardness of vi commands, and I have to wonder why | anyone would voluntarily choose such a mess as an editor. I can see how it | would have been great stuff in 1971, when there was nothing better, but today, | it's a joke. vi is an incredibly powerful editor, and while you may think the commands are awkward, consider these points: 1 - vi is universal. It is worth knowing simply becuase it is the only editor that you can count on being present on practically every *NIX system. It is built to run under the most basic terminals, which makes it suitable for hostile conditions. 2 - vi has the appealing quality of requiring ONLY the core keyboard - NO arrow keys, NO mouse, NO function keys. Notice that the movement commands 'h', 'j', 'k', and 'l' are comfortably near the home position of your right hand (if you know proper typing that is). No command is perfectly intuitive in any system - once you know a handful of commands habitually, you start thinking about the command's action as opposed to the keystrokes (ie. you think "delete a line" as opposed to "dd deletes a line"). How intuitive is alt-f4? 3 - notepad was made for taking notes. vi was made for editing code. Can you indent an entire section of text with a couple of keystrokes in notepad? Can you search and replace on a pattern in notepad? How about a simple trick like knowing your parentheses match up properly? 4 - vi's commands are widely accepted and implemented in other software. Just as alt-f opens the file menu in most windows applications, 'j' & 'k' moves up and down in many *NIX applications. vi is a powerful tool, and any powerful tool requires time to learn. Just because it isn't apparent to you, that doesn't make it a "joke". my $0.02 (Canadian) (excuse my bluntness - coffee hasn't kicked in yet) -- Steve Tremblett To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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