Re: How many of us are there left?

[Russell Urquhart russurquhart1@xxxxxxxx]

Carl,

I would just add a few things in addition to what Rafe added.


On Sun, Dec 07, 2014 at 09:40:18PM -0500, Raphael wrote:
>
> Emacs always kind of scared me, mostly probably thanks to the superior
> tone of its users, so I never got near it. It took me a couple of years
> to not be frightened of nano, the default editor in naked Linux, so I
> know what you mean about line-centered editing. But Vim's
> paragraph-editing nature really is precisely like XyWrite -- more so
> (forgive me), at least in *nix, since carriage returns break paragraphs,
> not lines. The trick is getting the hang of its primary modes: the
> somewhat counterintuitively-named "normal" -- which is really "edit";
> "insert," which I think of as "writing." Normal mode features lots of
> speedy one- and two-keystroke commands for moving and manipulating text
> and cursor (maybe something like WordStar, which I never used), and is
> also the gateway to the "command colon" -- normally at the bottom of the
> screen, though I would be very surprised if it can't be moved to the top.


I too had used Emacs sometime back, when i first used a Unix workstation. I got used to it, and
realize, now, its level of configurability, much like Vim, but i never really got used to the tweo
chord type commands, e.g. Ctrl-k, then something else, etc.

In Vim, for me, if you think that you have an insert mode for inputting long amounts of text. When
you are NOT in that mode, pretty much all of the keyboard characters do something to the text with
relation to where the cursor is. And as these commands can be just regular single characters, this
opens up a lot of commands. For example at my work, i edit a lot of xml documents. To delete the
current word i'm on, i type in dw. To delete the three following words, 3dw. If i need to change the
4 following words, and put something else there i do, 4cw. This deletes those four words, and puts
me in input mode at that point. There are a LOT of commands like that.

>
> I'm absolutely certain that if your XyWrite is not broken there is no
> need for you to fix it, Carl. On the other hand, it probably took me
> twenty tries to get through Swann's Way Lord knows how long ago, but
> I've reread A le recherche twice now, and look forward to the next few
> goes -- once you get on it, it's like floating down an idyllic river,
> and no place you'd rather be.

I can't agree more with this sentiment. If Xywrite could do syntax coloring and folding, and easily
handle xml files and larger documents, and i didn't have to jump through the emulation hoops,
especially here on my PPC mac, i would still be using it as well.

Both of you guys have made me want to check out Proust now! :)

>