emacs vs vi

[The Grey Wolf]

I have never used honest-to-hot-puppies Emacs before, but I have used a very
nice, compact, fast derivative called "jove" (some of you may have heard of
it...).  There are quite a few differences, namely in the macro definitions,
but other than that, it appears to fit everyone else's definition of Emacs.

Since vi starts up almost instantly at every site I've ever logged into, I
use vi for small files and trivial adjustments.  I use Jove for large projects
because I find that I need those multiple windows, buffers and in-editor
shells (just so I don't have to exit/suspend to do something else).

With respect to regular expression matching, jove seems to handle just about
everything (it doesn't know how to do many of the RE suffixes, but as far as
substitute and/or search, it is very compatible with full RE's).

The main thing I find that I like about Emacs-style editors is that they are
stateless.  It is a royal pain in the /dev/null to have to alternate between
command and insert mode, at least for me (you are entitled to your own opin-
ions; I can't very well hold them against you...:-).  (My roommate complains
about stateless editors; he's used to touch-typing and likes being able to
have most of the movement and control keys in the home row.  Of course, he'll
have to remap everything when he gets his Dvorak keyboard...:-).

Summary:  While I can't make any claims against/for emacs, I can certainly
support each of jove and vi for their various advantages (vi for speed, jove
for versatility).  There is one thing that vi has that no other (non-vi, non-
ed related) editor seems to have:  An UNDO feature!  How many times have you
really trashed something in one swell foop and been grateful to have that
'u' key handy?  How many times have you not had it handy and wished you had?

Not wishing to start/perpetrate/perpetuate another religious war (waste of
time and bandwidth), the above represents my two cents worth.  I hope it
helps somehow.

-- 
 ** All views expressed herein are my own and not those of UniSoft Corp. **
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# Roan (RO-an) Anderson, UniSoft Corporation, (415) 420-6410 x 168.	  #
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