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Grex > Systems > #74: The Great Text-Editor Holy War Item. | |
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cross
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The Great Text-Editor Holy War Item.
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Apr 22 03:42 UTC 2007 |
Vi or emacs? I prefer acme (under Plan 9, or ported to Unix) or TextMate
(under Mac OS X).
This is the great text-editor holy war item. Best to testify in the name
here....
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| 80 responses total. |
mcnally
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response 1 of 80:
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Apr 22 03:47 UTC 2007 |
vim for me, unless I'm doing something very specialized.
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nharmon
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response 2 of 80:
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Apr 22 12:52 UTC 2007 |
pico/nano because I'm lazy and haven't learned very much vi. :)
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cross
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response 3 of 80:
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Apr 22 16:19 UTC 2007 |
Remmers had a great post about this subject on M-Net; I'm hoping he will
repost that with context here.
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kingjon
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response 4 of 80:
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Apr 22 18:10 UTC 2007 |
Vim. I do need to learn Emacs sometime, if only to take advantage of the
Emacs-like features of the Bash shell, but I've already got an operating
system; I don't want one in my editor.
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cross
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response 5 of 80:
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Apr 23 03:32 UTC 2007 |
Here's a blog post on switching from emacs to TextMate on the Mac:
http://www.oreillynet.com/mac/blog/2006/05/emacs_est_mort_vive_le_textmat_1
.ht
ml
The best line in it (regarding Emacs LISP): "Dont get me wrong, being fluent
in a programing language from 1958 gets me plenty of trim at parties."
Yea!
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maus
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response 6 of 80:
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Apr 23 06:18 UTC 2007 |
I prefer vi, because I am guaranteed to have the same base functionality
on UNIX, BSD, Linux, etc. I also like the fact that I don't hurt my
wrists trying to hold Esc+Shift+Control+K to make things happen. I also
don't like waiting longer for a text editor to start up than I do for a
full-blown GUI application like Gnumeric. Most of all, I learned vi
first, so I have an inherent bias towards it.
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mcnally
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response 7 of 80:
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Apr 23 16:16 UTC 2007 |
There's apparently no truth to the canard that emacs was named as it is
to be an acronym for "escape-meta-alt-control-shift". But it should have
been.
C-x C-c
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cross
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response 8 of 80:
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Apr 23 20:53 UTC 2007 |
Heh. Emacs was actually originally a set of macros for the TECO text editor
on the DEC PDP series of machines. It stood for Editor MACroS.
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ball
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response 9 of 80:
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Apr 23 20:56 UTC 2007 |
"joe" for me, because I'm from a CP/M background.
Does EMACS have Ctrl-S and Ctrl-Q bound to functions in the
software? If so, I think that qualifies Stallman as a
lunatic (in case anyone was left wondering ;-)
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mcnally
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response 10 of 80:
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Apr 23 22:16 UTC 2007 |
re #9: (regarding XOFF/XON -- nothing is bound to ^S, ^Q by default,
so far as I know. But it's not uncommon for people to customize emacs
with a site-specific customization file that binds functions to those
keys. Obviously, though, that doesn't work well via a terminal session.
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albaugh
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response 11 of 80:
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Apr 23 22:18 UTC 2007 |
I use vi because I do UNIX/Linux based editing so infrequently that I'm not
going to be learning something better, and knowing vi is fairly transportable
to the various *x flavors.
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maus
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response 12 of 80:
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Apr 24 06:03 UTC 2007 |
To be fair, vi has its quirks as well. The last time I drank with a
friend from UT Austin, he put it very well: "vi has two modes: one which
beeps at me, and one which mangles my file". A mode-oriented editor
either requires you to set a bit in your brain for which mode it is in,
or be prepared to hit Esc button before doing anything to know with some
certainty which mode you are in.
Oh, and be prepared to retrain your br@n3 when coming back to windows.
Apparently Notepad does not care much for trying to end a file by typing
"Esc :wq", though the version I had when I had that trouble was nice
enough to beep at me, just like vi.
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mcnally
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response 13 of 80:
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Apr 24 15:37 UTC 2007 |
In any vi made in the last 10 years or so you can probably ":set showmode"
to fix the awkward problem off not knowing when you're in insert mode..
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remmers
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response 14 of 80:
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Apr 24 18:07 UTC 2007 |
Re #10: In just about every version of emacs I've used, ^s and ^q are
bound to the functions "isearch-forward" (incremental search) and
"quoted-insert" (for inserting control characters and such in the
buffer), respectively. I can't recall ever having a problem with them
working correctly in an emacs terminal session. I'm sure emacs
accomplishes this by putting the terminal in raw or cbreak mode.
Stallman has a lengthy explanation somewhere as to why he thinks this is
appropriate and that binding ^s and ^q to XOFF and XON is "wrong".
I posted a lengthy response on M-Net recently about vi vs. emacs and why
I prefer the latter for source code and some other kinds of highly
structured text. Will repost it here eventually, possibly shortened.
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ball
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response 15 of 80:
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Apr 24 22:50 UTC 2007 |
It's not a question of binding ^S and ^Q to XOFF and XON,
they /are/ XOFF and XON by virtue of being DC3 and DC1! If
you're on a link that's using hardware flow control and
ignoring software flow control, it's no problem. If you're
on a link that requires (or respects) software flow control,
you're screwed.
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