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- From: martelli@cadlab.sublink.org (Alex Martelli)
- Newsgroups: comp.editors
- Subject: Re: VI??? GROSS!
- Message-ID: <1992Nov19.104052.9782@cadlab.sublink.org>
- Date: 19 Nov 92 10:40:52 GMT
- References: <1992Oct28.162607.5613@sunvax.sun.ac.za> <1992Oct28.214551.21668@wixer.cactus.org> <LYT86XN@math.fu-berlin.de> <1992Nov17.024356.17586@dmp.csiro.au>
- Organization: CAD.LAB S.p.A., Bologna, Italia
- Lines: 116
-
- lachlan@dmp.csiro.au (Lachlan Cranswick) writes:
- ...
- :simple editor I have just given to site users
- :is PICO. It really is very simple and users didn't
- :believe there could ever be a simple editor for UNIX but they
- :have been proved wrong. It is also public domain software.
-
- I second the recommendation for PICO; it is what I have installed
- at home for my wife and kids to use. My son is outgrowing it
- after a week, but then he's almost 10 years old and has a quick
- technical-oriented mind; he's noticed how my fingers fly and
- move and delete and change text FAST on vi, and he's eager to
- learn. For my daughter (not quite 8-year old yet) and my wife
- (a humanities professor) PICO is about the right tradeoff level
- between complexity (about none at all) and features (few but well
- selected; the always-visible menu and modeless operation help).
-
- :It is very easy to get elm to use it as its default editor
- :and you can make nn use PICO as its default editor by putting
- :the line
- :
- :setenv EDITOR /bin/pico (or wherever the editor is)
-
- A warning on nn configuration: the INTERNAL variable editor, if
- set, takes priority over the environment variable EDITOR, so
- check the nn startup files (system and user's) if exporting
- an EDITOR variable set to pico's path should not "work".
-
- :One of the indicators on how much average users hate vi
- :is that some of the site users were editing their
- :documents in a simple DOS editor, then uploading
- :it to the unix machine. Is this comomon on other
- :sites that use UNIX.
-
- I notice rather often people moving files around to edit them
- on some other platform, particularly when NFS sharing of
- filesystems makes it more convenient, but also with ftp.
- A DOS machine guarantees some advantages (totally consistent
- response time, for example), so I myself have on occasion
- ftp'd Unix files, edited them on a PC (with vi itself, of
- course), and ftp'd them back! This becomes far more important
- when, instead of an Ethernet in between, one has a terminal
- emulation going on some modem thing, maybe 2400 bps even!
- Then, a compress+zmodem from the host Unix machine to the
- PC emulating the terminal, then a PC editing session (with a
- PC version of vi, by choice), then a compress+zmodem right
- back, becomes BY FAR the fastest way to proceed! Thus I see
- no indication at all, afforded by such behaviour, that there
- is any vi-hating going on; indeed as I have indicated I do
- such things even if what I have is vi on both sides!!!
-
- That said, no doubt some persons grow just too affectionate
- to a specific editor - for example I see people using SET HOST
- on VMS to be able to edit (remotely) with ED, if one machine
- only has EVE/TPU available, and DESPITE the fact that the
- latter can be set to 99% correct emulation of the former!
-
- :The most extreme case was for email. The person edited
- :his letter in MS WORD 5.0 for DOS. Saving the final copy as
- :a text file. Then uploading it via serial line to the UNIX
- :machine to mail off.
-
- Yes, it's PARTICULARLY nice to do so (with compression and
- a good filetransfer protocol, of course) when the connection
- is other a slow/noisy serial line, since on-host editing can
- then become unbearable (no matter what the host editor). I
- thus don't see anything necessarily extreme about this.
-
- :This question was part of the is UNIX dead flamewar on comp.unix.questions
- :but if UNIX is so good compared to DOS - and DOS is the bottom of the barrel -
- :how come you never seem to find new DOS users uploading their text files
- :to a UNIX machine to edit. This seems to imply UNIX has some big
-
- Maybe YOU never seem to find that, but I do! It's exactly what happened
- when many people around here *were* new to DOS - they'd go out of their
- way to do as much as possible on the Unix side! I then installed MKS
- Toolkit (Korn Shell, vi, everything) and the phenomenon abated since
- MOST things you can now do *identically* in Dos or Unix. Still it does
- happen, when something *tricky* must be done as part of the editing,
- that gets done better or faster by tools available on the Unix side of
- things only; NFS makes it almost painless then.
-
- :failings with common users. And no - the fact that you can get vi for DOS
- :is not the only answer!!
-
- vi IS hard - I think I did the right thing in not pushing my 7-year old
- daughter to learn it, with PICO she can enjoy writing on our home
- "play"station much more; a clever 9-years-old, however, particularly
- one with any bent at all for techie things, like my son, IS mature
- for vi.
- "bent" has MUCH to do with it: my wife is a VERY intelligent person, as
- shown for example by her summa cum laude degree in Hindi studies, yet
- she was finding it a torture to learn and use vi - with pico, she does
- plod along successfully. She simply does NOT want to learn ANYthing
- about computers, just USE them. An iconic environment, as opposed to
- a command line, she finds to be HORRIBLE, since she cannot jot down a
- sequence of commands to do to perform a task; the BEST thing is a menu
- system, tailored for a few things which are exactly the ones she needs
- to perform. No doubt other "naive users" have other problems yet, for
- example not all will be so heavily verbally-oriented as to find a
- graphical environment a problem, indeed most will prefer it to judge
- by the market success of GUI's. I think the human factors group would
- be better as a forum for this discussion, though...
-
- :At least with some very kind people writing
- :simple editors for UNIX, new users will not be turned off immediately
- :after they try to edit a text file.
-
- Yup, and menuing systems (that can be tailored by a knowledgeable
- person to the "new user"'s needs, so the latter need not learn
- anything more) are just as important, I believe. Many users will
- grow from that to a more mature usage (vi, etc), such as my son;
- many won't.
- --
- Email: martelli@cadlab.sublink.org Phone: ++39 (51) 6130360
- CAD.LAB s.p.a., v. Ronzani 7/29, Casalecchio, Italia Fax: ++39 (51) 6130294
-