🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <DAVIS.92Jul31170548@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu> davis@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu  (John E. Davis) writes:
>
>I have seen questions such as ``Where can I find a simple editor for UNIX?''
>time and time again on this group.  I cannot help but to wonder what it is
>that people want.  What *is* a simple editor?  In my opinion, emacs is a
>simple editor.  I have begun to think that when someone asks for such a thing,
>he is using this definition:
>       a) not vi

     "a)" should probably be "a) not modal"

>       b) editor that does not require building (eg. edit makefile, etc...)
    
        c) an editor that will terminate with an obvious command
           sequence (say, alt-X as opposed to :wq  or  ctrl-X ctrl-C)
        d) an editor that always binds page up, page down, and the
           cursor movement functions to obvious keys on the user's
           terminal (pgup/pgdown bind to Prev Scrn and Next Scrn and
           up/down/left/right bind to the appropriate arrow keys on
           a VT-220, for example).

>Obviously, with these two restrictions, the two most common answers (vi and
>emacs) are ruled out.  When one adds the further constraint that the editor
>must be cheap (free) what do you have left?

Granted, the last constraint is nearly impossible to meet on most UNIX
systems.  However, I find *both* vi and emacs to be fairly gross (I use
vi on UNIX) when compared to some editors available in the icky DOS world.

Personally, I like command-based editors like XEDIT (because I can't
remember keystroke commands), where it's fairly obvious where the command
line is and where "HELP" can be typed to get some results.

Daryl
--
Daryl Biberdorf                 |  Compaq Computer Corporation | standard
darylb@sword.eng.hou.compaq.com |  20555 SH 249  M/S 060701    | disclaimer
dlb5404@tamsun.tamu.edu         |  Houston, TX 77070           | applies