Re: Great SWT Program

On Dec 20, 4:57 pm, b...@xxxxxxxxxxx (Bent C Dalager) wrote:
You're insane. Of course emacs can edit text

Ah, but you said it couldn't.

No, I said that if certain things that you said about it were true, it
would be very difficult, particularly for nonprogrammers, to edit
nontrivial amounts of text with it.

It's the archives I was referring to, not the unread posts.

They're in the same place, idiot.

Another insulting and irrelevant reply that doesn't say anything
specifically in response to what I'd written.

No, what it says it that [insults deleted]

Exactly. All it said was insults.

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

Stop quibbling. You know what I mean. Assuming you don't use the
crufty split-screen feature that leaves you with a truly minuscule
amount of usable screen real-estate, you have one large one and
sometimes also the mini-buffer.

[insult deleted]

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

Some of us (actually, most) aren't stuck with EGA screens but actually
have modern, high-resolution displays

Then why in God's name are you using archaic software that's unable to
take advantage of all of the powers of modern graphics hardware? Get
with the times! Unless you are using an ancient 386 with no decent
graphics modes there's really no reason to be using this Stone Age
stuff. :P

Yeah, when someone is crazy enough to buy a 1680x1050 LCD screen - you
just don't know what they'll come up with next! Pandemonium I tell
you, pandemonium!

What's crazy is buying a 1680x1050 LCD screen and then running console-
mode Unix cruft, bell-bottoms, polyester, and other things from that
era instead of modern software.

Yeah, probably right down to one thousand nine hundred and twenty tiny
little one-character ones, fat lot of good that they'd be. Modulo the
split-screen feature though my original remarks stand. It can be
either as bad as I've described, or, using the split-screen feature
for extra fun and claustrophobia, it can be even worse. I rest my
case.

[insult deleted]

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

It's hardly a gadget. It's a line of text that is blank most of the
time.

In other words, it's a waste of space most of the time, exactly as I
said was crufty.

You're a hypocrite, Bent, if you defend this waste of space yet attack
Windows programs for having a menu bar or title bar taking up a
proportionally similar amount of space.

So, you're contradicting your earlier claim that enter will sometimes
work normally in it and sometimes will not?

Enter always works normally in it - I never claimed otherwise.

You implied otherwise. You more or less stated that it sometimes will
not insert a newline. Worse, that whether it does so or not is
dependent on nothing a normal user will be able to even guess at. It
looks like an archaic distant ancestor of Notepad or Word, with a main
window full of text, at all times, but some of those times that text
is editable normally and some of those times it behaves very
differently, and the only hint as to when it will do what is some
obscure, non-self-explanatory text in the status bar such as
"Fundamental". Fun for the whole family -- keep all the non-unix-
experts guessing for hours what it will do next!

You can tell at a glance what any given window is.

Irrelevant.

Ah, yes. That a text buffer clearly indicates that it is not normal is
irrelevant in a debate as to whether or not that text buffer looks
exactly the same as all other text buffers - in Twisted world.

But it does not clearly indicate that it is not normal. There is
always a box of text with a blinking cursor, which suggests
(especially when you ran a text editor from the command prompt and
that's what made it appear!) an editable text area. There is always
some cryptic thing or another, like "Fundamental", in the status bar.
Basically, it boils down to learning a whole new language to interpret
what's in the status bar, THEN pay close attention to this for subtle
changes to what non-self-explanatory word is in it, and of course for
each possible such word memorize a whole alternate set of key
bindings!

It is basically all of the fun of dealing with the full command-line
unix experience of wacky and inconsistent bindings from app to app,
all in a *single* app, and with the added fun of guessing when it's
going to suddenly stop behaving like one app and start behaving like
another instead of that only happening when you explicitly launch a
specific app as you would at a command line. Instead, you open
document 1 and it behaves like a normal text editor; open document 2
and it behaves normal; open document 3, don't notice the status bar
change, and bam! Nasty surprise heading your way!

The closest Windows equivalent is when double-clicking different files
opens different applications. But it *opens different applications*.
You get a very different looking window with different controls and
contents, and it's clear a) that it isn't Notepad (except when it is)
and b) what it *is*, as well as c) how the controls work because they
are standardized, more or less, anyway.

Your cruft appears to behave like a kind of mini-crufty-text-mode-
Windows-imitator with no desktop but behaving more as a shell with a
collection of apps than a single app, despite masquerading as the
latter, but then behaving analogously to a hypothetical Windows where
double clicking any document type always brought up a Notepad window
with the blue notebook icon, "File name - Notepad" in the title bar,
and a large block of editable-looking text (complete with blinking
cursor) occupying most of the window, save for a status bar at the
bottom that had some cryptic word or another in it. Only these
different Notepad instances actually behaved wildly differently, as
differently as the distinct Windows apps you'd really use for all
those different file types, despite not *looking* wildly different,
with only what document you opened and what the status bar currently
said to give a couple of cryptic hints as to what to expect. Always
just the textarea control, but with very different behavior from one
open document to the next when you hit normal editing keys in it.

The above is EXACTLY the experience users of a modern GUI, e.g.
Windows, MacOS, or modern X applications, will get attempting to use
the emacs you have described. It is exactly how they will perceive it.
It will drive them bonkers!

Your claims of emacs being a superior choice for everyone who edits
text much have been blasted out of the sky, shot down in flames, and
the smouldering wreckage stomped into the ground, doused with acid,
and left in the path of an F-5 tornado. Going to give up now, or shall
I throw in a category 5 hurricane, magnitude 9 earthquake, and a VEI-8
volcanic eruption to Pompeii the ruins of your once-magnificent
grandiose claims as well? (And after that, if you keep fighting, I've
got a few MIRVs* to chuck at the entombed remains, too! Ten megatons*
each. Keep it up and your laughable claim will have been *vaporized*.)

* Echelon, have fun with these false positives, my holiday gift to
you, and merry fucking Christmas.

And a stinking New Year.

And a change of government after one more year.

:P

There being some visible correlate of when it will
behave normal and when it will *** up doesn't make the latter
occasions not ***-ups.

Except, of course, it wouldn't be ***-ups, it would be desired
behaviour.

No, desired behavior, as decided by just about all of the people that
you've recommended emacs to but that don't currently use it, would be
for enter to consistently insert a newline into the big block of text,
precisely as it does in Notepad and Word and every other text-editing
app they have ever used.

It just means that, with extra annoying
training, a user could learn to anticipate its ***-ups and work
around the problems thus caused, while most users still kept getting
tripped up by surprising and unexpected behavior.

[insults deleted]

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

Ah, yes, now the center of the main status line is "some obscure
corner of some status area" - in Twisted world.

Every part of the status line is obscure, because normally a status
bar tells you peripheral information you might want to check on (such
as link destinations, how much memory is left, etc.) but the main UI
works the same way regardless (insert/overtype being the major
exception AND AN ANNOYING ONE!); to top it off, the meaning is
obscure. It won't say "Enter works normally" vs. "Look out!", it will
say "Fundamental" vs. "grep" or something of the sort. You need a
goddamn English->Gibberish, Gibberish->English dictionary to interpret
for you, which you'll need to print out since you won't have a clue
how to access it from inside emacs without mucking up the very thing
you're trying to observe, and ending up unable to see both at once. :P

Unless you're some sort of expert user that has all of this ***
memorized, of course.

The ONLY sort of user that can even use this miserable excuse for
software very well at all.

it remains true
that the big rectangular text editing part of the text editor does not
consistently let you enter newlines with enter. And that's a Bad
Thing.

Of course, this doesn't sound so bad once one realizes that [insult
deleted and puts words in my mouth]

Inconsistency in the UI is ALWAYS a Bad Thing, moron. The more obscure
its behavior is to predict, the more terrible that behavior is.

Windows apps that use radio buttons as checkboxes or vice versa are
committing much the same sin. Sure a user can learn to guess when a
poorly-designed app really meant checkbox when it said radio button,
but it's still awkward and nasty and especially so for novice users.
The emacs you describe more or less does likewise, but with bells on.

I don't call solving the problem "not solving a problem at all".

Walking away from the only computer where it can be solved [snip]

That is not what I suggested. I suggested plugging in a mouse, and if
the computer still did not work correctly, replacing the computer.
Replacing a defective machine or missing parts is certainly normal
problem-solving behavior.

You seem to be hypothetically supposing a complete inability to do so,
which would mean that some sort of time warp had happened and you were
suddenly back in the seventies. The solution for *that* is to have
yourself put into cryo-suspension for thirty-odd years. :P

I
guess the Bent-dictionary does, but what the hey.

[implied insult deleted]

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

I don't necessarily shock "easily".

[calls me a liar]

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

If you're going to be silent, then be silent, and don't post to this
thread again.

[implied insult deleted]

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

If you wish to say something still, you can begin by
actually addressing the things that I say instead of ignoring them
completely and then gratuitously and irrelevantly insulting me!

I did

Liar.

[vicious insult deleted]

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

You just don't learn, do you?

[insult deleted]

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

YOU claimed software could do this over a text terminal. I'm just
challenging you to explain how and indicate exactly which hardware
provides the capability in question.

My MBP, for one.

Speak English or leave.

[insult deleted] even VT100 supports underlining.

But not color, nor a pointing device, and none of the nasty things
that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

Gotcha.

Right, because [babbles on for paragraphs about his imagined
"Twisted-world"]

Please stop changing the subject and please stop with the personal
attacks. ***.

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

(If you hate this "Twisted-world" so much, why are you obsessed with
it and bring the subject up like every five minutes?)

(Newsflash: all text terminals use graphics to show their content -
the only way they could ever hope to show text is by lighting up
pixels after all!)

You know damn well what I mean. The software must be able to pixel-
address the display, rather than only character-address the display.

Nice to see you getting so desperate as to resort to such cheap
tactics as that, though. Twisting things to try to score points on a
technicality like that, and banking on people being complete idiots so
as to misunderstand what I mean by text mode vs. graphics mode! Shame
on you!

Using emacs or vi on a modern computer other than *perhaps* remotely
over a poor net connection is like using a horse-drawn carriage to
commute to work while your reasonably serviceable car sits in the
garage at home.

For some reason, I do not require ray-traced, rotating letters with
kewl textures in order to write source code.

That's a straw man.

You know damn well what I mean. I mean using general, pixel-
addressable graphics modes instead of character-based modes, asswipe.

The underlying terminal hardware /does/ use general pixel-addressable
graphics in order to render the text and so it can render anything
that its protocol supports.

Fascinating. But the software does not, and it is the software that is
at issue here. (Desperation alert! Bent's really dug himself a deep
one this time!)

Sure it does. Are you really so mathematically illiterate as to claim
that a set of real numbers with an upper bound exists that has no
least upper bound? I hope not.

[insult deleted, but Bent made no *meaningful* response to the above]

Aha -- gotcha!

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

No, that is YOUR suggestion.

[calls me a liar and puts words in my mouth]

*sigh*

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

If you still don't, then you are severely cognitively impaired and
should really not have unfettered net access in that home they put you
in.

[insult deleted]

*sigh*

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

Exactly my point.

So you are saying that one of your unstated assumptions at the start
of this particular topic was that "emacs is telepathic"

NO. I AM SAYING THAT ONE OF YOUR EARLIER CLAIMS, THAT WHEN EDITING A
QUERY IN I-SEARCH YOU WOULD RECEIVE "INSTANT" FEEDBACK IF YOU NEEDED
TO HIT BACKSPACE AND TRY A DIFFERENT SPELLING, WAS WRONG.

Mainly because for it to have been right emacs *would* have had to be
telepathic.

I didn't. I commented on how emacs would show the progress on the
search term you gave it, not whether it would somehow know that you
actually wanted to search for something other than what you entered.

Baloney. I specifically raised the issue of what if you typed e.g.
"colo" and where you wanted to go it was actually spelled "colour" and
you said you'd know "instantly" that you needed to backspace the "o"
and type a "u".

Which won't in general become apparent "instantly" the moment you hit
the first key different from what's needed to go where you intend.

It might, and it might not.

And Bent capitulates on another point. "It might not," he admits.

Please make this process easier on yourself in the future -- just
capitulate immediately as soon as I challenge something ridiculous
that you say. You'll learn much faster that way, as well as suffer
less.

I rest my case.

[nonsense deleted]

Your mistake was in sloppily making grandiose claims about emacs'
supposed power that were easily falsified with just a little bit of
reasoning. And then not gracefully backing down from them when
confronted by the incontrovertible evidence that you had, shall we
say, exaggerated a little.

Well, I suppose it was something of an exaggaration of me to expect
[insults deleted]

*** you.

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

Does not; see pretty much every OTHER post in this thread.

Ah, yes, every other post in which you [insult deleted]

YOU have repeatedly claimed that the backspace key behaves in a way
that everyone with a brain and a bit of computer-using experience will
know is broken and awkward, Bent, and none of the nasty things that
you have said or implied about me are at all true.

Bollocks. Which is more efficient?

C-s
fiddles
C-sC-sC-sC-s
<bksp>
f
C-sC-sC-s
<enter>

vs.

C-s
fiddles
C-sC-sC-sC-s
<bksp><bksp><bksp><bksp><bksp>
f
C-sC-sC-s
<enter>

The latter of course, since the former runs a risk of not finding it
even if it exists.

Bollocks. Sensible behavior would be for backspace to jump it all the
way back to the first hit as well, or for the search to wrap at the
end of the document if you kept hitting next-match. The latter might
be better, as for example if you know that there is only one "bar"
between the first "foo" and your destination, and that "bar" is right
by your destination, you could type "foo<bksp><bksp><bksp>bar" and be
right there. On the other hand, the former might be more intuitive.

What currently happens if you're at the third match for "foo", the
first two matches were just "foo" and "foobar", respectively, and you
hit the B key? Does it jump back to that earlier "foobar", or forward
to the next "foob" (staying put if the third "foo" continues with a
"b")? If it does not jump back, then you're a hypocrite since the same
objection you raised to my suggested improvement applies to extending
the search query as it *currently* works. If it does, on the other
hand, you're silly for attacking my proposed improvement the way you
did instead of assuming it would do likewise. And, of course, if it
won't let you extend the query while you're on the third hit, then you
earlier lied when you said the query was never read-only and the
broken backspace behavior doesn't even occur (as it's no longer
failing to backspace at a time where typing would insert what you
typed somewhere), and indeed, have flip-flopped *four* times here now,
between two different and incompatible versions of the story of how
the emacs i-search UI works!

Choose your poison. Does typing that B:
* Not insert it;
* Insert it and jump back, stay put, or jump forwards as appropriate;
or
* Insert it and either stay put or jump forwards as appropriate, but
never jump back.

(...) Note
the four extra keystrokes. Less efficient, even if only a little.

Four keystrokes is a small price to pay for the functionality to
actually /work/.

See above. Also consider that it might be forty, or four hundred,
depending on circumstances.

I like this thread quite a lot and I don't see why we should kill it
off for no good reason.

Hardly anybody else does.

And it gives me more to do between meals during the holidays :-)

Continuing to post during the holidays would be cheating; essentially,
forcing me to fight with one hand behind my back, with my life at
stake. Don't.
.