[SunRescue] Pico Forever!!!

[Ken Hansen]

The real "feature" that Pico has is the key combinations for
several common operations are displayed on the bottom of the
screen. Most new VI users get tripped up with the "modal nature"
of VI - if they would simply turn on 'show mode' (or whatever it
is called) they would be in good shape. Also. learning to press
the escape key every once in a while is a good habit too.

VI is very straight-forward and logical, but you have to
understand the origin of VI and the context it was developed
under.

Before there were mice to navigate, there were cursor contol
keys on "high-end" terminals, but "real programmers" didn't use
them because: a) you had to pick you hand off the keyboard to
use them, b) theyre was no standard location on the keyboard for
them (across the top, on the left or fight, etc), c) may not be
supported on your terminal. Almost every keyboard I have seen
has an h, j, k and l key...

Ken

-----Original Message-----
From: rescue-admin at sunhelp.org
[mailto:rescue-admin at sunhelp.org]On
Behalf Of Greg A. Woods
Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2001 5:03 PM
To: rescue at sunhelp.org
Subject: Re: [SunRescue] Pico Forever!!!


[ On Tuesday, March 6, 2001 at 11:05:21 (-0800), Chris Byrne
wrote: ]
> Subject: [SunRescue] Pico Forever!!!
>
> But for simple text editing like email or readme files, there
is no need
> to load up something the size of emacs, and vi is unnecisarily
complicated
> for beginners to use.

I don't know....  You can (and I have) taught total computer
newbies to
do useful things in both emacs and vi in a matter of a few
minutes.  The
problem most teachers have is showing off all the fancy tricks
when all
a newbie really wants is to type some text and to correct his
mistakes,
just like on a typewriter, but with a working backspace.

As for loading up emacs, well you're only really supposed to do
that
once when you login and then keep using the same session over
and over
for everything (unless you have your own personal high-powered
workstation, I guess).

> Pico is relativley small, simple, and users can generally
figure it out
> without extensive tech support. I deal with a lot of UNIX
beginners when
> I teach security classes, and years of experience have taught
me that subjecting
> these folks to vi or emacs is just not worth the headache for
either of
> us.

Pico is, IMNSHO, a piece of crap.  It's apparently somewhat
based on
micro-emacs, but they went and changed all the user-interface
for no
good reason.  If you want a decent small editor then why not
choose a
true stripped down emacs, such as jove, micro-emacs, or mg (or
its
Japanese sibling ng)?

Once you learn the very basic emacs key commands (about 6 are
necessary), you can use many other editors too, including many
command-line editors and many tiny editors in many applications
(Netscape, tcl/tk, etc., etc., etc.).

> I agree with the "experts" who always say that you should
learn vi because
> it's on jsut about every system, IF you are a UNIX admin, or
plan on using
> UNIX extensivley. But for the many people out there who only
use UNIX occaisonally
> (and with great pain) I think pico is the right editor for
them.

The problem with that is that pico is rarely installed anywhere.

The reason to learn vi is not if you plan on using Unix
extensively, but
if you plan on using it at all ever.  Vi is the only editor
(other than
ed) that can be guaranteed to be everywhere, at least in some
form or
another.

--
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098      VE3TCP      <gwoods at acm.org>
<robohack!woods>
Planix, Inc. <woods at planix.com>; Secrets of the Weird
<woods at weird.com>
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