Decent Unix Editors!! (one man's opinion, anyway)

[Cary Petterborg]

I should have known when I posted my original reply that there would be a
flame fest.  I have been hearing enough grumbling from the engineers here
about Emacs until they learn it that I felt somehow compelled to respond.
BTW, all the engineers here in my department were told to use Emacs.
All those who have really tried to use it have found that they REALLY
like it for program development.  Where I worked before, the company
president liked an editor we no longer supported.  We made emacs work
just like his favorite editor.  As time went on, he abandoned his emulator
mode and started using the standard emacs stuff, with some of his own
modifications that he developed on his own.  He was on a dumb ASCII
terminal and hardly ever left Emacs because it gave him almost every-
thing he wanted.  To this day he swears by Emacs for program development.
He even uses it for word processing, as I do.  'nough said.

In article <1991Apr25.083732.6664 at zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> xanthian at zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:

> > You appear to want a word processor program not a program editor. If
> > you want a word processor, emacs may not be your cup of tea. Even as a
> > program editor you may not like emacs (I agree about vi). But DON'T
> > say that emacs is not a decent program editor. Emacs, by its proven
> > popularity is a decent program editor.
>
> Nonsense. Emacs may be a good editor (I like it) but that doesn't follow
> from your logic. The two driving forces in its widespread use are that
> it is public domain, and thus widely ported, and also thus free, and
> that there isn't much else around better.

Not even commercial software.  Isn't it interesting that Emacs is even
sold by some commercial software companies.  Not GNU Emacs, which is
in most cases superior, but Emacs nonetheless.  If they are making a
profit, it must be good enough for people to pay good money for it.

> It's a big step up from vi for editing code, but it is a long, long way
> from "decent".

If you JUST want to edit, maybe not, for you and some others.

> 1) There are whole categories of desirable features either missing or so
> obscure as to be unanvailable; like decent, easy to type, text chunk,
> rather than file or window oriented, navigation commands; like useful
> file requestors; like buffer selection without retyping the buffer name
> every time.

I don't know what system you are working on, but all currently opened
buffers are only a <shift><ctrl>mouse-click away on mine.  Very fast
and very easy!  As for loading of files into buffers (not already loaded
into a buffer), they are only a <shift>mouse-click away, and I can navigate
with my mouse through the directory hierarchy.  If you want to know what
to do to get this in your system, I will be glad to tell you.

> 2) There are lots of completely counterintuitive, grotesquely bad and
> hideously inconvenient design flaws that are grandfathered in and will
> never get fixed, like:

My, my...

>   sabotaging users whose destructive backspace key is not DEL but ^H by
>   using that for the hard wired (and nearly impossible to remap at edit
>   time) "help" key,

Easily changed in your .emacs file.  Simple really.  Add to your .emacs:

	(global-unset-key "\C-h")
	(global-set-key "\C-h" 'delete-backward-char)

Doesn't look nearly impossible to me.  (Yes, I just tried this and it
works beautifully.)

>   and the counterintuitive and frustrating near miss on being character
>   oriented, as when a newline gets ignored as a self-insert when a blank
>   line already follows it.

Please explain.

>
> 3) It's scripting and macro command language is wonderfully obscure and
> only loveable by people heavily into AI or text processing programming;
> most Emacs users haven't a clue about Lisp, which means for most people
> the macro facility is unavailable.

Try asking in gnu.emacs.help, I'll bet someone will send you the
necessary code to do the functionality you desire.  I would suspect
that a professor could even get a student to write the necessary code
to do just about anything he wants.  He's the one that started this,
right?  And aren't professors supposed to be fonts of knowledge about
the subjects they teach students? ;-)  (No reflection on you really
Prof. Harrison.  I know that professors are as specialized as MD's
today.  Gone are the days of the country doctor...)

> 4) The learning curve is much too steep. You can sit down with a good
> shrink wrap, menu oriented editor for microcomputers and everything is a
> mouse selection or two away, available for instant use; it can take
> months to even _find_ the emacs online help, much less be comfortable
> with using it.

Ever try the emacs on-line tutorial?  Oh, I guess you haven't.

> There are good and sufficient reasons that lots of people detest emacs.
>
> >     In an insane society the sane man must appear insane.
>
> > Unless the world is insane, you are wrong. Maybe it is just your
> > ignorance about emacs that is the problem.
>
> There speaks a man who has never used a _really_ good editor.

There speaks a man who has never really used Emacs.

> > Are you really a professor?
>
> Yes, George is really a professor, and he's almost as old as I am, and
> a lot more useful to the world.

No doubt. (;-)

> > A statement as you made seems awfully narrow minded.
>
> Not nearly as much so as yours.

No doubt.  (    :     -     0    )

>
> Kent, the man from xanth.
> <xanthian at Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian at well.sf.ca.us>

Sincerly, and hopefully with composure,

Cary
--
_______________
Cary Petterborg					   (801)582-5847 x6446
Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp.  Simulation Division   SLC, UT 84108
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