In praise of the FP-45 :-) (was: Re:Hardware experiences?)

[Paul King]

On 9 Sep 2006 at 0:03, Colin McGregor wrote:

> --- "Chris F.A. Johnson" <cfaj-uVmiyxGBW52XDw4h08c5KA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > On Fri, 8 Sep 2006, James Knott wrote:
> > >
> > > You mean there are some people who actually don't
> > need a 64 bit version
> > > of vi?  ;-)
> > 
> >     Or any version, for that matter.
> 
> Now, now... I have dealt with old Sun boxes where the
> only editor awailable was vi. So vi has its place, for
> things like editing network configuration files, so
> you can go out on to the Internet and download a nice
> text editing program :-) .
> 
> In other words I see vi as being like the World War II
> FP-45 Liberator pistol, a REALLY cheap and REALLY
> nasty pistol that was given out to resistance groups
> in Europe and Asia. The standing "joke" about the
> FP-45 was that you only used it to kill someone with a
> better gun and then threw the FP-45 away... With vi,
> use it to get something better and then ...
> 
> Colin McGregor 
> 

I would only agree if you are using pure vi. There are vi clones, such as 
elvis, vim that are much more configurable. Many people dislike the idea of 
"command mode/edit mode" that vi uses. I feel that it is the most efficient 
way to navigate a large document or large chunk of source code. I also like 
the idea that vi by design can be used on nearly any keyboard with a QWERTY 
key layout.

I still use pure BSD-style vi when I have no choice (such as my vex 
account, where elvis doesn't seem  to configure all that well). It has a 
reduced command set, and thus reduced configurability. "Pure" vi lacks 
syntax highlighting, help menus, and several configuration commands that I 
make regular use of under elvis, such as "se nowr" to prevent text 
wrapping. My vex account has vim, although it seems to run with a lot of 
warnings, so I don't use it all that much.

Also, elvis has the ability to run makefiles from inside the editor, using 
":make". vim also seems to have this feature. When there is an error 
relating to a line number, elvis will bring your cursor to that line.

And of course, there is emacs, of which I have only ever used xemacs, and 
only then in viper mode. While I don't want to start a religious war over 
vi versus emacs, I can't see how hitting two, three, or more keys --
including various control and meta keys -- for an editing command under 
emacs is more efficient than hitting one key for doing something similar, 
as is typical in vi. Just my opinion. Of course, emacs has a million other 
things it can do, but for that I have the rest of Linux.

I guess I direct this question mostly at Colin: Were you implying that 
emacs would be something better? If not, what else? nedit? pico?

Paul King

--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wini/Mailing_lists