Date: Tue, 21 May 1996 10:31:02 +0100 (BST) From: Paul Richards <p.richards@elsevier.co.uk> To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de Cc: jfieber@indiana.edu, andreas@knobel.gun.de, msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, kuku@gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de, freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: /stand/ee Message-ID: <199605210931.KAA03061@cadair.elsevier.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <199605210619.IAA09246@uriah.heep.sax.de> from "J Wunsch" at May 21, 96 08:19:16 am
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In reply to J Wunsch who said > > (Moved to -chat) I was going to let it drop but sicne it's moved to chat :-) > Unfortunately, *vi* didn't pick up some of the human interface > principles that were embedded in *em*. At QMC we had already > concluded that modal interaction was a bad idea, and I had gone to > some lengths to ensure that the interaction in *em* didn't involve > more than one meaning for any key. This principle was badly > violated in *vi* with its insert and edit modes. Well, you either love or hate vi. Personally I've come to quite like it since I can get things done a lot quicker in vi than anything else because it has a rich set of movement commands. That's neither here nor there though. "Traditional" unix users know vi to some extent and expect it to the default unix editor unless they change it themselves, which a lot of them do. I guess the obvious thing to do is provide an installation option that sets the default setting of EDITOR. New users will probably just pick the default and use ee but if the option is presented at this time then at least those experienced unix hackers can get things set up as normal. I don't see much point in bringing pico into the base system, if people choose it as the default editor then sysinstall can unpack it and install it as a port. I'm not a die-hard traditionalist, if the unix community could be moved away from vi to something more user-friendly then great but it still a simple fact that at the moment it's a requirement to know *some* vi to be able to work in the Unix world. If all you're ever going to do is play with FreeBSD at home then I guess ee will be enough for you but we should be cautious in changing FreeBSD too much in favour of non-unix users. -- Paul Richards. Originative Solutions Ltd. (Netcraft Ltd. contractor) Elsevier Science TIS online journal project. Email: p.richards@elsevier.co.uk Phone: 0370 462071 (Mobile), +44 (0)1865 843155
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