[H-GEN] Simple Linux editors

[doug rickard]

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----- Original Message -----
From: Scott Pullen <spullen at optusnet.com.au>
To: <general at lists.humbug.org.au>
Sent: Monday, April 08, 2002 8:57 PM
Subject: Re: [H-GEN] Simple Linux editors


<snip>
> Oh for what it is worth Doug, I don't know of any 'command line' editor
> that is simple.  Seems to me that you have answered your own question
> about the best way to do it.  If you are comfortable in Windows then use
> notepad let ftp do the file format coversion for you and make your life
> easy.
>
> Cheers.
>
> Scott.

VMS had a forms based editor that could work on a VT100 or later terminal.
The VT100 was a slightly intelligent terminal in that it could scroll the
whole screen up one line or down one line. It was easy to just mark a point
in the text then hold the down arror to get where you wanted to end. Then
you could cut the section or do anything else with it. ESC bought up a
simple hierarchial menu that one could scroll through just using the 4 arrow
keys. The only thing one required to know to use it was where the ESC and
arrow keys were. People who had never used a computer before could create
and edit a document without any help. That is what I look for in user
interfaces. Why should I have to remember numerous command sequences when I
have a computer to do things for me? Intelligent design of user interfaces
is a dying art. Too many programmers tend to let something like Visual Basic
make all the decisions for them and we end up with all the clutter we see
today.

As to your second suggestion, that is exactly what I currently do. It works
well and takes less time that trying to get help on emacs. Sometimes I eeven
just use the DOS EDIT, it has most of the features I need to edit a user
config file. I know all its problems, but they really don't affect what I am
trying to do.

>From all the responses pico looks as though it might be worth trying.

Doug.





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