Re: Great SWT Program

On Nov 3, 9:52 pm, b...@xxxxxxxxxxx (Bent C Dalager) wrote:
[snip]
Well, the truth is that it does both. It goes back one match every
time you press backspace until it comes to the first match that
matched the current search string, then on the next backspace it will
delete the last letter of the search key, then you will get the
previous hit on that key (if any) and so on and so forth.

How broken. You can't edit properly at this prompt with backspace,
then -- exactly the sort of thing you claimed didn't happen any more
with reasonably configured unix systems.

Gotcha!

[snip a variety of nonsense in a similar vein to this:]

In much the same way that in my experience, antarctica isn't cold.

[snip some more]

That is only an option if you're using a graphical app. Then you may
as well use a KDE or Gnome app that acts fairly natural.

Certainly, such as emacs under KDE or emacs under Gnome.

You must have overlooked the phrase "that acts fairly natural" at the
end of my earlier sentence. :P

Unless, of course, you don't know all kinds of oddball arcana like
that, or the particular application doesn't support that sort of
functionality, or does but binds it to another key, or...

This is only a matter of training, which I do not consider to be an
issue.

And I do.

[snip lots]

None of these are problems for people who have used emacs more than a
couple of days.

I disagree.

Which I do, so I don't see the problem.

:P

Well, once it reaches the point of complex commands needing editing,
what you really want is a proper shell prompt or even a script.

Emacs has a shell prompt if you want it, and it supports scripting.

So does bash, and unlike emacs, bash specializes in doing that one job
and doing it well.

If you can point to a GUI-ish search paradigm that actually addresses
these problems, I would find it interesting.

As I said, it's AI-complete. But the search's strengths and GUI
capabilities are orthogonal. A GUI just makes it easier to use -- and
may make it easier to do some tasks in other ways that don't involve
searches.

FWIW, I seem to recall blmblm mentioning a similar capability in vi. I
repeat: what a mess.

Attributing vi features to emacs certainly /is/ I mess, I agree.

I didn't; she did.

Not a problem once you've learned it.

Which is nontrivial for exactly the reason that there's such a huge
hodgepodge of global variables. Likewise, spaghetti code full of
global variables is, in theory, maintainable, but in practise people
prefer to maintain code that's a bit more structured.

The mini-buffer uses the standard paste command (C-y). It's
incremental search that does not, because C-y is bound to something
eminently more useful when searching.

More special cases and messiness in the UI.

Indeed, all in the name of increased convenience.

Interesting to see a glimpse inside the twisted world of unix text-
mode designer types, where gratuitously overloading things and
confusing the user base constitutes "increased convenience"; any sane
developer would have left C-y alone there and found something else to
bind to your "eminently more useful" but unspecified command.

.

Relevant Pages

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