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- Newsgroups: comp.editors
- Path: sparky!uunet!wupost!csus.edu!netcom.com!messina
- From: messina@netcom.com (Tony Porczyk)
- Subject: Re: What do you want in a simple editor?
- Message-ID: <+_1nb4g.messina@netcom.com>
- Date: Wed, 16 Sep 92 04:15:41 GMT
- Organization: Messina Software
- Distribution: comp
- References: <861@ozz.oasis.icl.co.uk> <mxynjgh.messina@netcom.com> <862@ozz.oasis.icl.co.uk> <1992Sep15.184309.28261@cs.cornell.edu>
- Lines: 52
-
- cwong@cs.cornell.edu (Christopher Yoong-Meng Wong) writes:
-
- >In article <862@ozz.oasis.icl.co.uk> ppg@oasis.icl.co.uk (Philippe Goujard) writes:
- >>messina@netcom.com (Tony Porczyk) writes:
- >>>[various comments from various posters deleted for brevity]
- >
- >IMHO, the Wordstar command set will outlive Wordstar itself. There does not
- >seem to be any other contendor to the title of "editor key command standard".
-
- I wish I knew what "standard" you're talking about. I have several friends
- who used Wordstar (like I did) way back when, but none of them could
- fluently operate it now. If you mean 5 or 6 most common cursor
- movement commands or block commands, then that's hardly a "standard"
- considering that cursor keys (just look at their name) are certainly
- easier and more popular among most users (alright, you geniuses 200
- gadzillion words per minute vi users, yeah, I know, you saw the cursor
- keypad off).
-
- >A look around my machine is all I need: DR Dos's editor, Borland's Turbo C++,
-
- DR DOS editor is pathetic compared even to "edit" in MS-DOS, and
- frankly, resembles Wordstar 1.0, if there ever was one. Borland's
- IDE implements wordstar keys *also*, besides more intuitive keypad and
- mouse commands, not as the *only* set.
-
- >some freeware editors (VDE and TPE) and even the editor in my
- >telecommunication
-
- Never heard of them.
-
- >program, use the Wordstar commands. It seems that every time someone writes
- >an editor and needs an interface without pull-down menus etc, the Wordstar
- >command set is picked.
-
- That's funny, just looking at the most popular programmer's editors
- (not necessarily in that order): Brief (why did Borland possibly buy
- it if their "wordstar" editor was do good?), vi, Emacs, QEdit, I don't
- see a single one that implements Wordstar commands.
-
- >Just look at the index to files in Simtel20's
- >pd1:<msdos.editor> archive.
-
- Forgive me, but at least half of the stuff on all archival sites is
- total crap.
-
- >If you do not use Wordstar commands, what other alternative is there?
-
- Look at the four editors above, each one of them implements different
- alternative. Each of those alternatives is better than Wordstar.
-
-
- t.
-