🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct30.131124.15866@dscomsf.desy.de>, hallam@zeus02.desy.de (Phill Hallam-Baker) writes:
> In article <1992Oct26.005345.1@cc.curtin.edu.au>, zrepachol@cc.curtin.edu.au
> (Paul Repacholi) writes:
...
> The problem with emacs is that a considerable effort must be put into getting
> the thing up and running by the support staff. I get very fed up with the smug
> "go and find it out from info" attitude of many emacs hackers. My main
> difficulty with emacs is trying to get out of the buffer modes and in particular
> how to get out of the damn program. There are scores of new users who get
> themselves trapped in the help facility and are unable to get out.
> 
> In short emacs is not an easy editor to learn. Although it has many nice
> features and beats any other UNIX editor, in my view brief and LSE beat it on
> consistency and ease of use.
> 

On the set-up, I agree 100%. It would be nice to have a VMS intergrated emacs
kit that could just be dropped in place. This includes changes to info, docs,
and the e-lisp stuff as well. It would mean it would be almost a seperate line
from the main Gnu releases.

I find complete novices are quicker to get going with emacs as they don't have
the aditioal bagage, ie that a help screen is different than any other. It can
be very hard to move between two thing that have differing models of operation,
rather than differing ways of implementing simular models.

> Since and editor is the main tool a programmer uses it should be accepted that
> each individual has the right to have a say in the choice of editor. I would go
> so far as to say that the costs of learning another editor are just not
> ecconomic if there is a purchasable alternative. Just because the system manager
> uses emacs does not mean that they should force everyone else to do so.
> 

Again, 100% agree. I don't care what you use. Just don't ask me to show you
how to do things in EDT or TPU or SOS or... Wonder what will be the next 
'standard' editor DEC will hoist on the unspecting. I have only ever used Teco
and Emacs in 20+ years of dec hacking.

On a unix box, emacs is a hell of a hard act to top.

~Paul