[H-GEN] Vi (well, Vim) or Emacs (Jove suggested)?

Christopher Biggs chris at stallion.oz.au
Wed Aug 22 02:56:49 EDT 2001


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Sarah Bernadette Kelly <sbk98 at uow.edu.au> moved upon the face of the 'Net and spake thusly:

> I'm going to take my life in my hands by asking the age-old question -
> should I use a Vi variant or an Emacs variant as my editor?
> 
> Input, please?

Both.

GNU Emacs is my source-directed syntax-highlighting editor.  Emacs is
my mail and news reader.  Emacs is my integrated source-level
debugging environment.  Emacs is my CVS front end.  Emacs is my file
manager and directory editor.  Emacs is my binary file editor and
patcher.  Emacs is my environment for performing complex one-off
modifications of large text files (through recorded macros and
snippets of e-lisp).  Emacs is my desktop calculator.  Emacs is my
environment for small one-off computer programs to calculate useful
things or do data manipulations.  Emacs is my psychoanalyst.  Emacs is
started Monday morning, and runs all week non stop.  Emacs understands
and enforces my employer's C coding style rules, but switches to BSD
or GNU mode when I have to maintain code which conforms to those
styles.  Emacs is my address book, calendar and journal.  Emacs is my
interactive front end to LaTeX, with which I write all my
correspondence, reports and presentations.  Emacs knows about the
types of files I often create and has initial templates for each of
them.  Emacs intelligently collapses source code and other documents
to outlines, for easy navigation.  Emacs is my manual page browser.
Emacs does things the way I want because if something annoys me I can
change it.  Emacs has the commands I need to use regularly bound to
simple mnemonic keystrokes.  Emacs, to be brief, rocks.

But vi is still what I use when I'm in a hurry.

--cjb

-- 
| Christopher J. Biggs -|- R & D Software Engineer --  Stallion Technologies |
| chris at stallion.oz.au -|- If it isn't broken, I just haven't touched it yet |
\---------veni vidi nuclei deceiri --- I came, I saw, I dumped core----------/

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