Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 11:22:18 +0200 (MET DST) From: grog@lemis.de (Greg Lehey) To: chuckr@Glue.umd.edu (Chuck Robey) Cc: jehamby@lightside.com, coredump@nervosa.com, winter@jurai.net, freebsd-current@freefall.freebsd.org Subject: Re: editors Message-ID: <199605230922.LAA14510@allegro.lemis.de> In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.91.960522220142.26002B-100000@thurston.eng.umd.edu> from "Chuck Robey" at May 22, 96 10:04:19 pm
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Chuck Robey writes: > > On Wed, 22 May 1996, Jake Hamby wrote: > >> On Wed, 22 May 1996, Chris J. Layne wrote: >> >>> On Wed, 22 May 1996, Matthew N. Dodd wrote: >>> >>>> On Wed, 22 May 1996, Chuck Robey wrote: >>>>> That being the case, I have b'maked pico, and given it to Jordan. This >>>>> is a chance to everyone to comment, and tell me that replacing ee with >>>>> pico is wrong. If you don't want this to happen, now's your chance ... >>>> >>>> vi. >>> >>> vi. >> >> In Chuck's defense, I would say "vi" too, but if you had a choice of an >> editor IN ADDITION TO vi, which would you pick? (remember it must fit on >> the boot floppy :-) I heard one vote for "joe" which is a decent editor, >> but since pico is more popular, and we ARE doing this for newbie's, I >> narrowly lean towards that. I would NOT choose ee, as it has no advantage >> over vi to me, nor would I expect, to a new user. >> >> So in other words, if there is room on the boot disk for two editors, one >> of which being vi, what do you vote for as the second editor? > > I appreciate the defense, Jake, but it's not on the mark. I hate pico, I > would never use it, but neither you, I, nor Chris qualify as new users. > I am talking about a new user's editor, period. Something to replace ee, > NOT to replace any tool that any of us use now. > > I am talking about lowering the fear level for approaching FreeBSD. OK, I think it's established that most people here wouldn't use pico (I heartily agree). The question is, is pico a good editor for beginners? I don't think so. It has too many non-intuitive control character functions. That probably puts it only slightly ahead of vi for real newbies. Isn't there some editor out there that vaguely resembles Microslop's 'edit'? It doesn't have to be the same, but the idea of using the standard function keys rather than control sequences would vastly raise the acceptance level for newbies. Does anybody know an editor which would meet these criteria? I haven't looked at micro emacs lately, so I don't know whether it can now (be persuaded to) do this, nor if it's small enough to be practical on the boot disk. Greg
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