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

[Craig Eldershaw]

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Hi Sarah,

I started off as a vi-only person, then moved to emacs+vi, then back to
vi-only.  So while I don't actually have emacs installed at the moment,
I don't consider myself a vi bigot.  On the other hand, my mailer of
preference is mailx+vim, so take what I say with a grain of salt...

The switch to emacs came when I was doing larger projects involving
dozens of .c and .h (or .tex) files simultaneously right from the
start.  I found switching between all of these was vastly easier in
emacs.  This was especially useful when I was starting a project and so
was simultaneously scetching out a lot of these files at once.
However once the development (or writing in the case of a thesis) got
to a certain point I'd switch back to vi for fast editing/corrections.
Movements within a file and minor changes were just so much faster.

These days I've moved back to using vi (vim with syntax highlighting
actually) running in lots of xterms with tiny fonts (one for each
relevant file) at once. plus an extra couple of xterms for man pages or
compilation.  The mouse is only used to switch contexts or occasional
cut+paste between windows.

A few other comments:


>What I don't like about vi: the modes tend to confuse me a lot.

Vim can be configured to display the current mode in the bottom line.
But in any case this problem will probably diminish with extended
usage.

Emacs can do anything.  Vi might be able to, but it feels very
articicial and forced to try to do so.  Even things like running make
from within vi is not something I've ever persevered with -  yet alone
web browsing.  

Vi is tuned for fast movement and changes.  Emacs may well be better
for bulk entry.

One example of vi's speed is ".", especially combined with "n".
*Every* other editor I've ever used lacked this feature (at least in
such a lean manner) and I've missed it.

One other comment not raised so far: for sysadmin stuff (I know the
question was raised in a programming context), you *need* to know vi.
Use emacs as your primary editor of choice if you like, but if emacs
breaks, a 100kb statically linked vi stashed in /bin  or /root *will*
work (if that doesn't, you're down to the shell's "echo" and file
redirection...).

My 2c worth.

C.


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