Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2001 17:00:35 -0500 From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com>, David Leimbach <dleimbac@earthlink.net> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: RE: vi Message-ID: <15138.40067.503278.563554@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <126274975@toto.iv>
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Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com> types: > There's more to it than that. vi is very clever about minimal use of cursor > control characters during the file edit. It is possible and comfortable to > use vi to edit a file when connected to the UNIX system with no more than a > 300 baud modem connection. Emacs is very good about that as well. It's been a long time since I used anything slow enough to really see the difference, but I remember emacs being even better about it than vi. On the other hand, at 300 baud I tend to use ed - preferably a variant with a prompt - for short things, because you can open a file, find a line, change it, and save the file in the time it takes to draw a full screen at 300 baud. > (someone one day is going to have to explain how human intuition has > anything to do with technology, Fagh!) Since it doesn't, they can't. David Leimbach <dleimbac@earthlink.net> types: > As far as human intuition and technology... its a very important and > underaddressed notion. For computers to achieve maximum utility the interface > must be intuitive. I think PC's will never be as intuitive as say handheld > devices and things that completely abstract the "files and folders/directories" > to the point where the user doesn't know he/she has such things to begin with. There's no such thing as an "intuitive" computer interface. Most people saying that mean something like "familiar" or "habitual". Marketroids using it are practicing tweenspeech (see <URL: http://www.ubersoft.net/features/uletters/chapter01.html > for a definition). For a longer essay on this issue, see Jef Raskin's "The Humane Interface" (Addison-Wesley, 2000), pages 149-150. > Linux runs on the TIVO... most TIVO owners don't know that... [My boss > informed me of this fact so I can't actually verify that :)] You can get patches for the Linux kernel that Tivo uses from the Tivo website. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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