A.Sloman (A.Sloman@uk.ac.bham.cs) wrote:
: Hello Andy,
....
Regexps: OK, I've never tried Jon's package. I should, I admit. I also
accept Aaaron's point that Regexps are a really early-70's idea which
I should have nothing to do with, it's just that I've got so used to
the idea of being able to replace
my_func( arg1, arg2, arg3)
with
my_new_func( arg1, arg3, some_constant, arg2)
all the way through a file with essentially one editor command that I
miss it, that's all.
: > Oh, and *why*, except for implementation reason, does ved hae this
: > fetish for line-orientation?
: What does that mean? You want vertical lines of text as well as
: horizontal ones, or what?
OK, what I meant was this: (This is yet again one of those "personal
taste" issues: Which side of the line an individual is on is totally
arbitrary, I agree). It's an implementation detail that a ved buffer
consists of a vector of strings. This design decision has resulted in
a number of places in the "natural unit of working" for ved to be a
line. This is OK as far as it goes, but is arbitrary. As in so many
other places, Emacs just happened to jump the other way.
The notable place where this occurs is in the differing
implementations of "The Region". In ved, this consists of one or more
lines, with the boundary placed on the line boundary. In Emacs this is
not the case: Both the mark and the point are considered to lie
between two ajacent characters, and thus The Region can be any
arbitrary sequence of characters. (One can also do region operations
on rectangles, too, but IMHO that's just a bit *too* esoteric).
It's all down to taste, I admit, but in ved the standard unit of
editing data is the line (which is made up of characters, of course),
whereas Emacs just does operations on n characters. This is less
important in programming than it is in editing free text, of course.
The place where ved's n-line-region is really problematic is in xved,
where some operations work on the ved, line-based region, and some on
the selection (done with a mouse) which is of course character-based.
I still have no strong perception of which commands through which
method do what on which, after months of using xved. But this use of
two disjunct selection systoms is *wrong*.
: > And... wait for it... NO UNDO!!! Until you have to put up with a yank
: > which calls itself undo you have no idea how irritating it is. But
: > I've had this argument before.....
[Aaron's long and valuable discourse on undo...]
OK, this is why I like Emacs' undo rather than ved's (or vi's for that
matter): As many of you will have noticed, I'm rather a sloppy typist
who depends on the power of my editor to make up for the occasional
uncertainties of my typing. I don't think I'm unique :-). One of my
little foibles is that quite often I'll hit a key twice when I wanted
to hit it once (especially if it's an uncommonly-hit key).
The case I find most irritating, which has happened to me in ved too
often for comfort, is that I'll hit F4 and bounce the key so I delete
two lines at once. In Emacs, there's no problem: just hit ^xu ^xu, and
it undoes the last two things you did... In ved, you're done for.
You've lost that line (ignoring stuff like pulling up the backup file
and editing it in, or retyping the line).
That's what *I* want undo for. To make up for my fallibilities. Emacs'
undo is (usually) sufficient for me. Ved is (usually) not.
Again, I think it gets down to your expecatations of what an editor
will do, and that's probably due to which editors you've learnt and in
which order.
-Andy Holyer
"ed -> (Prime) "visual ed" -> Wordstar -> vi -> Emacs -> ved", I
think.
--
&ndy Holyer, COGS, University of Sussex, UK.
Still seeking work, by the way....
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