🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4qs8kg$15t@knot.queensu.ca> changj@jeff-lab@queensu.ca (Jianlin Chang) writes:

   Another question is: is it better to start with emacs vip or viper
   mode and gradually move to emacs mode or to start with emacs
   completely? Thanks a lot.

First thing to note is that viper is a standard package: you can rely
on it being present on any emacs of reasonable date (the latter you
cannot necessarily rely on, however). So you need not fear that a
standard emacs on another platform will not offer this functionality
to you as well.

Having that said, however, I'd recommend taking the pains and learning
the standard bindings. Print out the emacs help sheet, it will be an
invaluable aid in the first week or so. Emacs has a lot more of
functionality than vi, and has his own philosophy behind
keybindings. You will learn this better and more consistent if you use
the standard keybindings, and will typically need shorter key
sequences to get around.

If you intend in not using any emacs functionality besides that vi
offers you, you might not need to use emacs at all.

An additional boon, of course, is that you will get better along with
any older versions of emacs thrust at you.

In my opinion, viper mode and wordstar mode and so are more or less
there because some-one saw a challenge in doing them, and did them. Of
course, they are functional (to larger or lesser degree), but are not
"the real thing", and will obstruct keybindings which are put to
better use when using plain emacs.

I consider them demonstrators, like M-x hanoi, of what you can do with
emacs if you really try.
-- 
David Kastrup     Institut fuer Neuroinformatik, Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum
Email: dak@neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de  Telephon: +49-234-700-5559