Re: Great SWT Program

In article <yfmdncLjq9N3smXbnZ2dnUVZ_sSlnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxx>,
Lew <lew@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
blmblm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
I wonder whether your idea of a text editor differs from mine.
I have almost no experience with typical Windows editors, so
I don't know how capable they are. Some of the things I like
about vim:

(*) IDE-like features such as syntax highlighting and automatic
indentation / reformatting of source code. I almost switched to
emacs some years ago just to get access to these features. Then
I discovered that vim had them too.

(*) Interoperability with other tools. I don't know how to say
this better, but some examples: vim makes it easy to import the
output of a command-line command (such as ls), or run selected
lines of a file being edited through an external command (such
as sort). "No one wants to do this"? I dunno. I seem to find
it useful pretty often.

(*) vimdiff, which shows differences between two files in a way
that's sometimes easier to grasp than the output of diff.

(*) Ability to record and play back macros. This also is
something I seem to find useful pretty often.

Just for the record, and vim is a fine product, emacs has these features also.
That is to say, it's integrated with the UNIX utilities to do these things.

In my C++ days I really enjoyed using gcc and gdb via emacs, which would let
me coordinate the source and the debug session.

No Editor Wars intended. vim is a fine product. The first thing a duckling
sees is its mother forever after.

Agreed on all counts! If it wasn't clear (but I suspect it
was), I did not in any way mean to imply that vim is unique in
having the features I mentioned. In some ways I regret having
imprinted on vi rather than emacs, because emacs has had more
years to accumulate useful functionality such as you describe,
not to mention that customization/scripting is done in Lisp,
which is IMO much cooler than vim's scripting language.

Again IMO, those of us who cling to these old-time editors would
be well-advised to put aside the old Editor Wars and band together
against the common enemy [*]. But just the other day I heard one
of my students pushing vim and slamming emacs, so apparently not
everyone agrees with me.

[*] Which I think I won't try to define, since an attempt would
almost surely stir up familiar trouble.

--
B. L. Massingill
ObDisclaimer: I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: And they wonder why people switch...
    ... >a major application's features. ... >say Emacs or vi - I use emacs for scripts and things but wouldn't write ... There are some other editors. ... I'd check YaST, filtering for editors. ...
    (alt.os.linux.suse)
  • Re: An Editor that Skips to the End of a Def
    ... you're responding, removing quoted text irrelevant to your response.) ... Both Emacs and Vim are highly customisable text editors. ...
    (comp.lang.python)
  • Re: Why SlickEdit is superior to VIM and Emacs combined!
    ... There are scads of what I consider to be really good text editors ... Vi and Emacs are ... Vim and GVim are modern rewrites that add considerably to what ... Gnus is one of many applications ...
    (comp.editors)
  • Re: An Editor that Skips to the End of a Def
    ... you're responding, removing quoted text irrelevant to your response.) ... Both Emacs and Vim are highly customisable text editors. ...
    (comp.lang.python)
  • Re: what editor do you use?
    ... >>to edit a file with our editors and write some code. ... >>about 50% faster than him and emacs. ... > comparison is meaningless without a baseline comparison in an unfamiliar ... > I too use vim. ...
    (comp.lang.python)