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Date:      Tue, 6 Aug 2002 14:10:44 +0930
From:      Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org>
To:        Brian Astill <bastill@sa.apana.org.au>
Cc:        questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Is simplicity despised? WAS: What do we need in a FreeBSD desktop?
Message-ID:  <20020806044044.GA45553@wantadilla.lemis.com>
In-Reply-To: <200208060414.g764EqL15834@tierzero.apana.org.au>
References:  <00d301c23504$9bbe0c60$0a01a8c0@mswolf> <200207311037.g6VAb5L68944@tierzero.apana.org.au> <20020731094751.A55417@constans.gldis.ca> <200208060414.g764EqL15834@tierzero.apana.org.au>

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[-- Attachment #1 --]
On Tuesday,  6 August 2002 at 13:01:53 +0930, Brian Astill wrote:
> I was intellectually offended by the response to my suggestion that there is
> a use for a simple instrument such as the text editor le.
> Apparently if it isn't comprehensive and complicated it is to be despised as
> a "toy".
> Does that mean that users of FreeBSD are to become elitist intellectual
> snobs, discarding on principle that which is easy to use and understand?
> There is a precept that I embrace, called
> KEEP IT SIMPLE - STUPID!
>
> Shouldn't we all use the simplest and easiest method to accomplish a task,
> not deliberately choose the complex "over-kill" alternative?

If there's one thing that you need to learn early on, it's a good
editor.  I did install le just to see what it was like.  I think the
average user would find it harder to use than Emacs.

The reason for this is simple: people don't read documentation.  Emacs
gives you the documentation where you need it, in the menus.  le may
do so, but if it does, it's hiding it well.  Take a look at the first
two attachments, showing the top and the bottom of the window which it
displays once you give it a file name.  There's nothing at the top,
and the bottom, apart from being almost illegible, gives little useful
information.  I certainly don't know how to use it without finding the
man page.  It took me some experimentation to find out how to stop the
program.

By contrast, look at the Emacs window in which I'm writing this reply
(third and fourth attachments).  I'd show the pull-down help window if
I could; try it for yourself.

That's only the start, of course.  To reply to the mail message, I
pass the message to an already running emacs via emacsclient.  I could
write the reply with le as well, but how do I adjust the lines so that
they're not too long or too short?  Now's the time to read the man
page, which tells me that I can turn off the colours with the -b flag,
but it doesn't seem to have anything beyond basic editing capability.
By contrast, Emacs does automatic line breaking for me, and if I have
rearranged the text, a single keystroke reformats the paragraph.  Why
should I ever want to use le?

Greg
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