[olug] emacs book

[Vincent]

I agree that anyone seriously running Unix systems must know vi (or even emacs),
but I don't necessarily think that everyone using a Unix system needs to.  The
advantages of pico and nano is for people who are just starting out or people
who want to get something done NOW, not after they have read 10 pages about
moving the cursor around.  They can use these without any instruction.  I would
bet that my mother could use it!  I'm referring to users here or people who are
just starting to use Unix, not systems folks.  Nano ( http://www.asty.org/nano/
) is a GPL re-write of pico which works the same, but adds some new features
like "goto line #", regexp search and search and replace.  It's also faster than
vi when handling huge files (that's the claim anyway).  Nano can run in single
user mode and work on rescue disks.


"Mark A. Martin" wrote:
> 
> 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.
> 
> Best of luck,
> 
> Mark
> --

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