Re: ::scr Towards a better text editor

[simon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Simon Batistoni)]

On 01/10/01 11:14 +0100, Greg McCarroll wrote:
> * Simon Wistow (simon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) wrote:
> > My feelings on Emacs and Vi are, I think, pretty well known. I think they
> > suck. I think that they make editing text, their raison d'etre, hard. Which is
> > stupid.

I think the problem with most Unix text editors is really one of
learning curve. As Greg said, 

> im unlikely to change [from emacs] as i know its keystrokes well now

- once you get used to an editor's keystrokes, it becomes relatively
easy to use, even if the key combinations are ludicrous, and I think
the big problem may be more one of navigation and interface design
than anything else (is Celia here yet? :) ).

I've never had the time to sit down for several hours with emacs and
get to grips with its complexities - what I know, I know from
learning "on the job".

This means that I only use a limited, and essential subset of its
functionality. If I want to do something out of the ordinary, I'm
often using it in x, not -nw, and so I cheat, and use the mouse menus.

I see these as a blessing and a curse mixed into one. Whilst using
them makes the learning curve shallower - they're a relatively
intuitive way of finding a function - they also tempt you to grind
to a halt halfway up the curve, because you needn't memorise C-x 5 2
when you can just choose it from the menus.

> well i for one think editors should edit text, not read news, not
> read mail, 

I'm very wary of the "swiss army knife" approach to software. In the
real world, a Swiss Army Knife makes sense - if you're out in a
field for a month, you might occasionally need any one of 20 tools,
and it's much easier to carry a combined set of them than a whole
toolbelt. Even so, the blade on a SAK is generally not as good at
cutting as a dedicated 4" purpose-built knife. The scissors are more
fiddly and less proficient than a proper pair of scissors, and so on.

When you don't *need* a swiss army knife (which we never do in terms
of software - HDD space is cheap, etc), don't carry one.

> they can of course be used by mail and news software to edit
> messages, this make sense.

Use the right tools for the job, of course.

> cant understand people who want to play Elite, etc. in their editor

It's a good software joke - the sort of thing that most of london.pm
are very good at coming up with, in fact ;) But it's a really stupid
gimmick and nothing more. People who use it for emacs advocacy are
very, very wrong in the head.

>> So what else should a text editor have? Should it have less? ARGUE
>> WITH ME!

I like BBEdit, the limited amount I've played with it on the Mac,
because it has quite a few extra features available, *which make
editing text easier*.

For a programmer's text editor (which is what we're really talking
about here), I think a subset of such features can make our lives a
hell of a lot easier, where they don't get under your feet if you
want to subsconsciously block them once in a while. I use emacs
mainly because it makes at least a vague attempt at most of these,
at least IMO, more than anything else I've seen on (Li|U)nix:

- Syntax highlighting/colouring - makes it much easier to read code

- Bracket matching/highlighting - makes it much easier to avoid
fuckups

- An attempt at intelligent paragraph reformatting - great for long
code comments

- Support for indenting (I prefer this to be manually invoked rather
than automatic but YMMV)

- A decent find/replace function, preferrably supporting regexps

I think the argument for stripping text editors back too far is
flawed - I hate using Windows Notepad, for example, even to tweak
minor config files or scribble notes, because it is nothing more
than a basic scratchpad, and there are no facilities to bail you out
if you want anything more than to type text in.

I think that's a little more than 0.02 Euros :)

-- 

Simon Batistoni            Penseroso Ltd
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simon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx     +44 20 7242 0570
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