Use of ``vi'' for business office word-processing
Lord Kahless
kahless at samira.UUCP
Sat Sep 13 16:27:40 AEST 1986
> In my humble :-) opinion, I cannot think of any editor more universally
> useful than ``vi'' Am I WRONG in advising people to stay with ``vi''
> and not spend money for "word-processing software" in the BUSINESS APPLICATION
> environment?
> In my travels I have taken a cursory look at various word-processing
> packages for UNIX machines, and do not find their operation or command set any
> more intuitive than ``vi''.
> For three or four secretaries (and to allow
> for growth), I am inclined to recommend a 3B2 or NCR Tower XP as the most
> COST-EFFECTIVE means of implementing a multi-user system. Comments, anyone?
>
> ==> UUCP: {allegra|decvax|rocksanne|rocksvax|watmath}!sunybcs!kitty!larry
What? Hey, I'm sitting on a tower right now, and I generally like the
tower. But...
I teach UNIX part time, and I can tell you that vi is NOT intuitive.
There are no easy menus. There isn't a help button. There isn't
even a help function at all.
Compare vi to a Mac. You get into the thing, move around with your
mouse, and plug in your text. You say you can do more on a UNIX
system. True. But 99% of the time people don't need, or even want
those extra capabilities. They just want to slap in their text and
get a reasonably pretty document.
I've seen campus departments which tried to get their secretaries to
use the campus UNIX systems with nroff. Believe me, it was generally
a disaster. Nroff is too complicated, too powerful, and has really
terrible documentation. Vi suffers from the same problem.
If you want multi-user, get a lot of Macs If you want to go with
something cheap, a bunch of networked PC clones from Zenith or
Leading Edge or Sperry or NCR will put you up for less, and have
more expansion capability.
Also, a Mac doesn't require any complicated system administration,
file system checking, etc. While the tower is definitely the easiest
UNIX system to manage that I've ever seen, a Mac is much easier.
--
These views do not necessarily reflect those of the Imperial Propoganda
Division, The Klingon Empire, or our Emperor.
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