vi vs emacs in a student environment

[Richard Harter]

In article <421 at ns.ns.com> ddb at ns.ns.com (David Dyer-Bennet) writes:
>In article <424 at solaris.UUCP>, wyle at solaris.UUCP (Mitchell Wyle) writes:
>> Why Mitch (wyle at solaris.uucp) uses vi:
>> 
>> 1)  Availability:  vi(1) is available on every unix box I touch.  I don't
>>     have to INSTALL it FIRST!!
>  But it isn't standardly available on Primos, tops-20, tops-10, ms-dos,
>cpm, macintosh, or lots of other places.  Emacs is available (and in one
>case standard) on all of the above.  It's a much better choice for those
>not limiting themselves to one environment.

Having dealt with emacs on Primos, I should like to point out that *some*
implementations of emacs are very piggy on system resources.  On the other
hand, tops-20 emacs is quite nice that way.

One of the nicest editors I have used is IBM's xedit (given the constraint
of working on big blue iron.)  I've even heard hard core emacs fans admit
that xedit is a good editor :-).  It is a big win in a time shared environment
with heavy usage because most of the work is done in the terminal (327x of
course).  I.e. you edit the screen using terminal hardware and send the
entire screen to the CPU.  This is not as good as having a work station,
and much better than editors which make the CPU do all of the work.
-- 

In the fields of Hell where the grass grows high
Are the graves of dreams allowed to die.
	Richard Harter, SMDS  Inc.