VI(1) vs. the world

[Joe Buck]

In article <3772 at umcp-cs.UUCP> chris at umcp-cs.UUCP (Chris Torek) writes:
>>In article <113 at twg-ap.UUCP> narayan at twg-ap.UUCP (Narayan Mohanram) writes:
>>And one volley for the other side: I really like to be able to say
>>"15j" to go down 15 lines, and "40a -<ESC>" to be able to make an
>>80 column dashed line.  Does Emacs, (or any other editor, for that
>>matter) provide this repeat n times facility? (this is not a
>>rhetorical question, I don't know...)
>
>Yes, `but'.  To go down 15 lines, type meta-15 (type 15 while holding
>down the meta key), or ESC 1 5, or control-U 1 5, then control-N.
>Making a dashed line is more difficult.  Vi has a major advantage
>over Emacs here.

I'm surprised at you, Chris.  An old Emacs hand like you should know
that ESC 8 0 - makes an 80 column dashed line, in four keystrokes
instead of the five that vi requires.  I use this all the time.  In
Emacs everything is a command, so in a sense you're always in command
mode, rather than always being in insert mode.  '-' is just the
"insert a -" command.
-- 
- Joe Buck 	{hplabs,fortune}!oliveb!epimass!jbuck, nsc!csi!epimass!jbuck
  Entropic Processing, Inc., Cupertino, California