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

[ted leslie]

what really rocks is vi embedded in a GUI editor, (best of both worlds)
look at 
slickedit
and get blown away.
I down loaded a trial, and had no choose to buy it, 
its just in a class all by itself.
There should be a project to make a opensource/free version of this
puppy, but to my knowledge there isnt.

-tl

On Sat, 2006-09-09 at 11:33 -0400, Paul King wrote:
> 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
> 
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