[olug] emacs book

[Dave Burchell]

Mark A. Martin says:

> I think that it's important to be well-versed in at least one
> full-featured editor that you can use without the benefit of X Windows. 
> That way you aren't completely incapacitated if you have to run in
> single-user mode or if your X server won't start or if you have to boot
> from a floppy to repair a problem or ...  Emacs is huge and probably has
> too many features but it is also very powerful, interfaces well with
> other GNU tools such as gdb, has helpful modes for handling different
> types of files, and the virtual terms come in handy if you're stuck in
> one of the situations that I mentioned earlier.  I am also a fan of vi
> (or vim).  It is lightweight, full-featured, and you can find it on any
> UNIX system.  I have a good knowledge of both emacs and vi and use them
> both very frequently, depending on the task at hand or how I'm feeling
> on a given day.

> I don't think that pico is a very good option since it lacks a lot of
> features.  For example, what if you have to delete the last 199,840
> lines of a 200,000 line file (and you're not allowed to use head)?  This
> task would take less than 10 seconds in vi or emacs but could take you
> hours in pico.  I can't say anything about nano because I've never seen
> it.  Maybe it's too small for me to see. ;-)  But even if nano is
> full-featured, it isn't as widespread as vi and you may not have access
> to it if you're working on somebody else's system or on a new system at
> work or working from a rescue disk or working from one of the small
> Linux distributions or ...

> The point is that everyone needs to be adept with an editor and everyone
> who works with a UNIX system will sooner or later need some of the more
> advanced features of an editor such as vi/vim or emacs.  Also, some
> people need a more systematic approach to learning than they can get by
> just playing around with commands from a reference.  For those people, I
> suggest getting either the O'Reilly vi book, "Learning GNU Emacs", or
> the emacs book that Dave recommended and reading through their chosen
> book with the computer in front of them for trying things out.

> I've said way too much on this list over the past couple of weeks and
> have probably made more than my share of enemies.  I'd like to just shut
> up now and hopefully I'll be able to keep my big mouth shut.

I am now your sworn enemy.

No, just kidding.  But seriously, there are two reasons that keep me
using vi/vim and avoiding emacs.

1) Emacs has some strange filesize limit.  A fairly large file is too
large for emacs, but not too large for vi/vim.

2) Keybindings.  With emacs you are always reaching for alt, ctrl, meta
(what's a "meta"?)  Keep your hands on the keyboard with vi.  (Of
course, it would be nice to have a keyboard with ESC closer at hand.)

-- 
Dave Burchell                                          40.49'N, 96.41'W
Free your mind and your software will follow.              402-467-1619
http://incolor.inetnebr.com/burchell/                  burchell at acm.org     

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: olug-unsubscribe at bstc.net
For additional commands, e-mail: olug-help at bstc.net