[H-GEN] Simple Linux editors

[Greg Black]

[ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
[ Unix-related topics. Posts from non-subscribed addresses will vanish. ]

Ben Fowler wrote:

| On Tue, 2002-04-09 at 00:28, Greg Black wrote:
| 
| > Not by anybody who was paying attention.  I did not suggest that
| > people should use ed to write their thesis (although many people
| > have done that quite successfully and happily).  I was talking
| > about a specific situation, which I spelt out in some detail.
| 
| I quite happily used Emacs to write my thesis, and it did the job quite
| nicely.  Emac has a killer BibTeX mode too.
| 
| Realistically though (*puts on Devil's Advocate hat*), I think anyone in
| this day and age of 1.5 gigabyte IDEs [1] voluntarily using ed(1) for
| any sort of interactive editing task should be certified insane.

That's an excessive response.  I'm talking about situations
where ed is the only available editor and suggesting that people
who might find themselves in that situation learn to use it.
People who follow my suggestion are not (necessarily) insane.

I have never suggested that ed is the tool of choice for normal
writing tasks.  I don't think it is.  But it's a good tool to
use for quick editing jobs and it's easy to use for any of the
sys admin editing tasks that arise in any likely scenario.

| I had a sniff around my own system, paying particular attention to
| editors suitable for disaster recovery.  Let's compare the dynamically
| linked ed(1) and elvis-tiny, a cut-down version of vi.  As you can see,
| this version of vi links against one extra library. ae(1) is no worse
| than ed(1)
| 
| [...]
| [root at reptile] fowlerb# ldd `which ed`
|         libc.so.6 =3D> /lib/libc.so.6 (0x40020000)
|         /lib/ld-linux.so.2 =3D> /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)

Your system was built by an idiot.  There's no reason to build
ed other than statically, and that's how it's built on all
"proper" systems.  The other editors you mention are not part of
the standard base system on any normal Unix system, so they
don't qualify for the tasks I've been talking about.

| As expected, ed wins.  But even ae, a perfectly usable screen-mode
| editor weighs in at a hefty 160k.  By using ae, I sacrifice a whopping
| 116k of disk space, and get a screen-mode editor which enables me to
| work faster.  It sounds like a pretty fair swap to me.  When you
| consider "ease of use" and intuitiveness, I'd argue strongly that a
| screen-mode editor beats a command-mode editor hands-down.  Period.

You're talking as if I said something to the contrary.  I did
not.  I have been talking about circumstances where ed is the
only available choice.  It's a situation that can and does
happen.  If you don't want to be able to deal with that
possibility, that's fine.  It's your choice.  I have been trying
to help the people who don't want to be left high and dry in a
particular situation.

Greg

--
* This is list (humbug) general handled by majordomo at lists.humbug.org.au .
* Postings to this list are only accepted from subscribed addresses of
* lists 'general' or 'general-post'.  See http://www.humbug.org.au/