On Thu, 6 Feb 2003 Steve_Miller@sil.org wrote:
> On 02/06/2003 10:01:56 AM Mark Thomas wrote:
>
> >I am personally an emacs user, but editors are like
> >religion -- you love what you learn first. :)
>
> Not necessarily, on either score, but I get the idea. You Emacs users are
> a loyal bunch. :-)
Yes. In my LUG, we can often get into friendly vi versus emacs
fights. Sort of like Tastes Great versus Less Filling from some
approximation to beer commercial.
> >Why choose one over the other? emacs is modeless (meaning what you type is
> >what goes into the doc). It uses meta keys (CTRL, ALT, ESC) to carry out
> >commands. Vi is modal, meaning you are either in edit mode or in command
> >mode. Being an emacs proponent I'll claim emacs is more powerful. :) I
> tend
> >to only have an emacs window open on my desktop and use its directory
> >browsing, shell window, and compilation support for everything.
>
> I wasn't aware of those things. Thanks.
One thing I had seen written a long time ago, is that people with
long fingers tended to like emacs, and short fingers for vi.
Makes as much sense as any rules for picking an editor I guess.
Certainly if you have short fingers, some of the emacs key
combinations aren't easy.
*** On another note,
Someone thought I was making lightly of RSI with my earlier
note. I'm not a spring chicken (I'm 42), and a couple of
my jobs over the years (and education) have involved LOTS of
programming. And so far (knock on wood, or head :-), no RSI.
And I've been involved enough in rehab, that I can read a
lot of the good medical info. I have no doubt that people
who have gotten RSI have a problem to deal with, and I wish
them luck and fast healing. I think prevention is a big
part of avoiding RSI, and a big part of that is fitness.
As a group, programmers and other people who use keyboards
a lot are not big on fitness. Fitness includes aspects of
strength, endurance and flexibility. I had mentioned
things having to do with strength and flexibility in my
earlier note.
Gord
--
Matter Realisations http://www.materialisations.com/
Gordon Haverland, B.Sc. M.Eng. President
101 9504 182 St. NW Edmonton, AB, CA T5T 3A7
780/481-8019 ghaverla @ freenet.edmonton.ab.ca
780/993-1274 (alt.)