[PLUG] Emacs Question

[kurt braget]

i don't see why you would'nt just type <delete><space> while in edit mode.
or if you're on the 'y' of lazy, you could press <shift>+<j> to join. yeah,
it sounds like people are talking about vi, not vim. i've never used plain
old vi, which sounds like was pretty good at just pissing people off. in my
world, when i say 'vi' i mean 'vim', and my computer understands it that way
too (or at least it's aliased to). i think vim has most of the features you
laid out in your <pedantic> monologue </pedantic>. i'm so glad i joined this
group, i mean, who else am i going to talk to about vi (or vim) as if it
were shakespeare?

On 11/2/07, Ronald Chmara <ron at opus1.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Nov 2, 2007, at 6:21 AM, Carlos Konstanski wrote:
>
> > Go easy on the kids, Rich.  The emacs learning curve isn't for
> > everybody.  Either you have the emacs gene, or you don't.  Anyone can
> > learn vi.
>
> *cough*
>
> <pedantic>
> Surely, you must be joking. No scriptable syntax highlighting, no
> command history, no filename completions, no mouse support, no visual
> mode, only one buffer to work in, no X version, no diffing, no ftp/
> ssh sessions, everything based around editing lines, etc. etc. etc.?
>
> Okay, maybe *vim*, I could *maybe* see people learning that, but
> actual vi?
> </pedantic>
>
> ;)
>
> For those not following the joke, vim, which most current linux
> distros alias the 'vi' command to, isn't actually vi. It's a much
> changed version, because vi was *horrid*.
>
> 'vi' was originally a hack to 'ex', which was a hack to 'ed', and
> understanding this lineage (a single line editor, then showing
> multiple lines on a screen at the same time, then adding line
> navigation commands and multiple line "batch" editing features) is
> helpful when explaining to confused folks why incredibly simple
> ideas, like backspace, absolutely fail to work in vi, when the same
> feature works in the same way on pretty much every modern editor in
> the world. (example follows later)
>
> Heck, the whole reason I switched to emacs when I did, was that in
> comparison, using vi (back in the early 90's) took me three to four
> times as many keystrokes to accomplish the exact same tasks as in
> emacs. Sure, I could *sound* really busy, what with all that clacking
> noise (keyboards *really* clacked loud back then, it was a post-
> typewriter thing), but vi was just a dead-end, and it wasn't until
> nvi and vim came along that the vi family was worth even getting
> *near* again...
>
> So, here's my ultimate pet-peeve about vi, if I have a file with the
> following text:
> lazy
> dog
> ...with my cursor under the 'd' character, and I was in edit mode,
> and wanted it to read as
> lazy dog
> ..in any decent editor/terminal (as I would define it, of course)
> combo I would hit
> <delete><space>.
> Two keystrokes.
>
> The ancient and venerable vi would have none of that, it's a
> glorified single line editor, for a world without arrow keys! (Or,
> rather, arrow keys on HJKL, so your fingers are close to them, and
> the escape key directly to the left of the Q, so switching modes is
> easy...... Because designing a universal unix text editor around the
> horribly obsoleted ADM3A terminal keyboard is a *GREAT* idea.)
>
> At least, however, vi had options (much like perl, vi provides near-
> infinite ways of shooting yourself in the foot). Here's some examples
> of them:
> <ESC><k><$><shift-J>  (uhm, yeah... that's easy to remember)
> <ESC><RETURN><-><$><shift-J>  (natch)
> <ESC><shift-{><$><shift-J>  (are your eyeballs bleeding yet?)
>
> Sadly, because I know my vi skills date back to the System5R4 days, I
> assume much has changed, so I wouldn't be surprised if a vi
> descendant (such as vim) now has a macro of some kind to perform
> "jump-to-prior-line-and-remove-any-end-of-line-characters-and append-
> line-from-below-to-current-line-and-delete-the-lower-line", or even
> if vi *always* had some arcane combo that did the same thing, but
> that's not my point.
>
> My point is that vi cannot <delete><space>, because it is, at its
> heart, a *line* editor, and not a *file* editor.
>
> -Bop
>
> _______________________________________________
> PLUG mailing list
> PLUG at lists.pdxlinux.org
> http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
>