Very Computer

Glen Kuban

Quote:>I'm unfamiliar with Unix myself, but
>having used many quick and easy editors (I work on PC's and Lan's doing
>xBase programming), am surprised that Unix systems still seems to use
>editors as clunky as the old Edlin of early DOS versions. Surprisingly,
>most of the people at the new company seem happy as clams with vi and
>ex --unlike DOS people who never did have anything but disdain for
>Edlin (whoever invented it should be drawn and quartered I believe).

My grandfather told me that when he got his first car with a syncro-mesh
transmission, he had to un-learn double clutching, and was very annoyed
with it, even though he realized that it was a much better way of doing
it.

I do know that there are versions of Word Perfect (yuck!) available for
UNIX.  Perhaps this would help.
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If your girlfriend used an IBM mainframe previously, she may like THE,
which is an XEDIT clone. I used to like XEDIT, but no longer.

Barbara Vaughan

  >

  > : At any rate, she is going batty with vi and would be very grateful if
  > : someone could tell us if there are more friendly text and or graphical
  > : Unix editors (as sharewhare?), and where we might download them on the
  > : Internet.
  >
  > emacs

emacs

But she wants (wants??) to write COBOL novels - does Emacs have a Cobol-Mode?
(I bet it does)

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: emacs

To get the best from emacs requires a lot of expertise. It is not as bad
as vi but it has its own way of driving one up the wall (it tends to be too
freindly and though you can reconfigure everything, it is very difficult to
work out how to change anything). I would recomend NEDIT as a good editor that
is simple to use, but offers all the features you realy need. Get version 4 if
you can. If you have problems finding a copy then ask by mail

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 Are you using ISO8859-1? Do you see ? as copyright, as division and ? as 1/2?

Hi,
perhaps you're right, but if you start with emacs everything works fine,
you just write your code, whitout getting a peep, like the vi gives me
every time I use him. And at the time you have learned how to use the help
in emacs, you will be lucky to set up your own style, use modes and so on.
Pehaps you will chose the vi-mode in emacs...
IMHO emacs it's best, for the beginner as well as for an Guru.
Ciao
Holger
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: At any rate, she is going batty with vi and would be very grateful if
: someone could tell us if there are more friendly text and or graphical
: Unix editors (as sharewhare?), and where we might download them on the
: Internet.
pico that came with pine is very easy to use...
there is xwpe (X windows, and text version) that is a Borland-like IDE
for programming...
There is emacs, that is a little complicated at first...
And much more... (Go to a ftp site with unix software, there are plenty of
them...)

--
Linux inside!

Quote:>frustrated with the awkward vi editor, after using many easy and simple

--Paul

- Josh

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jstern

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Quote:>Sorry for asking a newbie question, but here goes...

You want pico. It is the most hand-holdy editor going. Of course it
will take much longer to do anything in pico than in vi, but that is
the price you pay.

Notice how pico rhymes with TECO, and try not to confuse the two.
Nature bowls another wrong 'un!

                        Pete

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I have been in somewhat the same situation with vi for the past year. (And I
had to use emacs for about a year before; it's no answer to easy editing.) I
suggest a book called _Unix in a Nutshell_ which includes all the vi commands
she'll ever need. Vi is learnable.

--
Dot James in San Jose, CA    "The secret of happiness is not doing

As much as I like vi, there are some really easy editors out there for
unix.  emacs is powerful, but still difficult compared to editors in
DOS land.  I suggest she try to run 'pico'.  It is the editor used by
the mail program 'pine', and might already be installed on the system.
It is easy, and the editing commands appear at the bottom of the screen.

I know a lot of DOS people who use 'joe' in unix, since it can be set up
to feel just like 'WordStar', or a few other old DOS editors.

There is also xwpe, which has versions for terminals, or for x, and is
just like the Borland IDE's in DOS.  It is kind of buggy though, last
time I played with it, about a year ago.

I don't know the ftp sites for any of these, but with any luck archie,
or a web search engine would turn something up.

Good luck,
  Vic.

But now that I've figured out all my favorite vi key sequences, I find
myself wishing Word used an editor like vi. If I get around to it I'm
planning on installing vi on my pc, so I can use it there also.

A vi convert. (Come over to the Dark Side, my son) :-)

If someone has a verion of the old "SED" editor ("SE" or "QED") I'd like
to see it. It's about the best handholding editor I've seen, with all
options continuously displayed at the bottom of the screen. Something like:

--I)nsert D)elete J)ump F)ind -)find ---- <TAB>)More--

You could hit TAB to display additional commands.

Then you hit J and it'd switch to this:

--T)op B)ottom ABCD)tag ------------------------------

So to jump to the top of the file you'd hit "jt" and be there.

It was also a reasonably competant editor. I didn't care to use it much, but
I put a fair amount of work into making sure it was available to our users
as long as possible (including running the Xenix-286 code under SVR4).
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: : emacs

: To get the best from emacs requires a lot of expertise. It is not as bad
: as vi but it has its own way of driving one up the wall (it tends to be too
: freindly and though you can reconfigure everything, it is very difficult to
: work out how to change anything). I would recomend NEDIT as a good editor that

        I would recommend emacs for a beginner's editor, if you also have
access to a nice beginner's style reference.  For writing code, the
auto-indentation and parentheses/block matching features are features
that I crave when I use other editors.  If you have access to an X
terminal, emacs has a menu system, which is really nice for beginners.  
        If you don't need the auto-indentation and matching functions,
pico works well, too.

--
Andy Steinbach