terse editor

[dave at math.mit.edu (David Backeberg)]

Some people have extreme opinions about which editor is "best", and 
ultimately, it depends on what user is trying to accomplish.

I recommend the small O'reilly books that give lists of commonly used 
commands and the keystrokes required to accomplish those, or you can find 
similar information with google. You'll notice the Emacs commands often 
require the Ctrl key with modifiers in multiple steps, like Ctrl-x Ctrl-s 
to save. With vi, you need to understand the concept of "modes", where you 
are sometimes in insert mode, and that certain keystrokes require you 
first pressing the : to get to a mode where you can enter commands.

Both editors support copy and paste, special color highlighting (vim or 
emacs run within X), and other nice features for "power users". Emacs also 
has "buffer modes", which affect the way syntax highlighting behaves, for 
instance, there are special color modes for editing C++ or html files.

-- 
David Backeberg (dave at math.mit.edu)
Network Staff Assistant
MIT Math Dept.
Rm. 2-332            (617) 253-4995

On Fri, 11 Feb 2005 karina.popkova at verizon.net wrote:

> Hello
>
> Someone told me that the 'vi' editor
> was elegant in its simplicity.
> It was most fundamental in its
> functionality and easy to use.
> Further, that with minimal key strokes
> one could build code or edit a script
> with ease and simplicity.
> (I am starting to appreciate the idea
> of working at the command line, so
> that the focus is on the task at hand.)
>
> They indicated that EMACs however, had greater
> utility in the development environment because
> one could edit, but also compile code without
> leaving the environment.
>
> As I use Fedora Core 3, the editor
> gedit seems easy to use, but it is sorta
> 'point and click' like windoze stuff.
>
> To what extent is vi or EMACs used,
> day to day, for development activities,
> writing code, editing, compiling, debug,
> etc ... Do hackers still use this stuff
> or do they concede to graphical editors
> and perhaps move onto next generation
> "eclipse" as an environment?
>
> karina
>
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