Re: CHAT: The ridiculously stupid, offtopic HCI thread.

John Cowan wrote:

> Keith Gaughan scripsit:
>
>>Yup, they're mostly Unix tools that date from the '70s. Nobody uses ed
>>anymore,
>
> /me waves his hand.
>
> Well, actually, I use ex; ed is a bit too minimal even for me, particularly
> in the lack of prompting and the absence of "z".  (Maybe I should hack
> GNU ed to incorporate the few ex features I actually use, and switch
> to it.)
Well, isn't vi just ex with a shiny surface? But then, ex is just ed
with a sanitised interface.

But, as has been said, you can't beat cat.

>>but emacs and vi are commonly used because vi has a small
>>footprint making it useful for admins who need a powerful editor they
>>can fit on a floppy.
>
> In fact, vim is about 900K, GNU Emacs about 1500K; the size difference
> isn't that huge any more.  (There are vi's that are smaller than vim,
> of course.)
Yup, I'm talking about good old stevie and elvis.

>>Emacs is completely programmable and almost an
>>OS in itself. These are, and pay attention now P-O-W-E-R T-O-O-L-S.
>
> There's a very interesting comparison of ed, vi, emacs, Sam, and wily
> (two GUI-based editors in the same spirit) at
> http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/complexitychapter.html .
Indeed. And I've bought the book already myself. Two thumb to ESR.

> Eric Raymond is the Margaret Mead of the Open Source movement.
>         --Bruce Perens,
>           some years ago
:-)

--
Keith Gaughan -- talideon.com
The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.