NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/comp/editors/2813

Text File | 1992-11-19 | 3.3 KB | 79 lines

Newsgroups: comp.editors
Path: sparky!uunet!microsoft!hexnut!georgere
From: [e-mail] (George V. Reilly)
Subject: Re: Arbitrary text blocks (Was: VI??? GROSS!)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 19 Nov 92 05:45:51 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corporation
References: <[e-mail]>
    <[e-mail]>
Lines: 67

[e-mail] (Jeff Wang) writes:
) [e-mail] (Barbara Vaughan) writes:
) |> Back in the days when I mostly worked with MSDOS and had a good editor
) |> that handled rectangular blocks easily, I used to use it to prepare data
) |> so I COULD read it into a spreadsheet or word processor.  For instance, if
) |> I have a file  of formatted data:
) |>
) |> 123456789
) |> 987654321
) |>
) |> I can use my editor to insert a column of blanks in front of each field so
) |> it can be read into a spreadsheet program:
) |>
) |> 12 34 56 78 9
) |> 98 76 54 32 1

) You could use :%s\(..\)\(..\)\(..\)\(..\)\(.\)/\1 \2 \3 \4 \5/
) to do that.

I use vi (or VIP, a vi emulation for GNU Emacs) all the time,
and I seem to spend half my life building up complex regular
expressions for searches and substitutions, but I don't find
the above solution to be particularly satisfactory.  It works,
certainly, and I would use it if I had nothing better, but
Emacs's rectangle commands, for example, would require much
less thought.

There's no way a non-programmer would come up with Jeff's
solution, whereas many of them would use a block/rectangle
insertion---if they knew about it.

Yes, I know vi is primarily meant to be a programmers' editor,
but many non-programmers end up having to use it and hating it,
despite the widespread availability of other, simpler editors.

) |> I also found this feature useful when writing programs.  Let's say I have
) |> a section of code I decide to make conditional, so I want to indent it to
) |> make an "if.. then.." block.  I just insert a column of blanks in front of
) |> that section of code.

) You could use :'a,'bs/^/  / to shift a block to the right.

Or mark the region and do a M-x indent-region, a solution
that works in more complex cases too.

I like vi: it starts up quickly, I can move around and change
text much more quickly with the vi command set than with any
other editor I know, and it's my editor of choice for making
quick changes to a file.  But I do all my serious editing in
GNU Emacs: it has multiple buffers, multiple windows, and
multiple undo; it has clever indenting (I now hate to write
code with real vi); it has online manuals and other forms of
help; it's customizable; it has built-in text formatting; and
a pile of other features which I use infrequently, if at all.
It's also big, bloated, often sluggish, and I don't like the
standard keybindings (which is why I use the vi emulation).

Vi can be made to do a lot of things, but it's often damned
hard work.  Why pipe a block of text out to fmt when you can
press M-q to reformat it?  (Actually, I usually use a vi
macro which splits the line at the 65th character.)  And I
like pressing Return while typing in code and having the
cursor automatically being in the right column.

Keep masochism in the bedroom where it belongs.
________________
George V. Reilly   <[e-mail]>