Re: [gtk-list] Re: vi bindings for text widgets

[George <jirka 5z com>]

On Tue, Jul 07, 1998 at 10:26:11AM +0100, Steve Hosgood wrote:
> Please, no!
> Why can we never break with the past and move forwards? Vi and Emacs and
> other such things were fine in their time, i.e the late 1970's and early
> 1980's when the "glass-TTY" with programmable cursor-control was the latest
> thing to have, and the lack of anything much more than an alphanumeric
> keyboard forced the use of weird mode-switching and strange ctrl-meta key
> sequences in order to implement a screen editor at all.

I hope you are not serious .... I like vi because it's fast for typing ....
your fingers are mostly just typing alpha numeric ... plus it's fast to do
edits in the vi way

> But now we're in the late 1990's! We've got decent keyboards. We've got
> mice. We've got X.

I've got a decent keyboard (although I would kill whoever put the esc key so
far from the alpha numeric keys) ... vim can use the mouse and I sometimes use
it ... but I don't wanna go to the mouse whenever clicking the arrow keys is
too long (and yes I use hjkl keys to move around because it's faster) ...
I want to move around by typing ... instead of pressing x times the arrow key
and looking where it goes ... I press w or b a couple of times or type a numeral
and b .... I want to replace a word I type cwand the word .. instead of reaching
for the mouse or pressing the delete key a bunch of times ... it IS faster

> Time to forget Vi and Emacs and move to Nedit, gedit and other modern editors!
> I consider that Vi-like support for readline was a serious mistake. It
> means that you can't just lean over a colleage's shoulder and type a couple
> of commands on his/her terminal (this happened to me a couple of weeks
> ago). Why isn't there any mouse support for readline?

read line is in insert mode by default ... so you can type all you want ...
the problem is something different ... readline vi support is not the best ...
I like zsh better then bash just because it is more vi like ...

if you like killing your wrists by going all around the keyboard for special
keys .. ok .. go ahead ... I don't ... yes "modern" type bindings are more user
friendly ... but vi or emacs bindings are faster more powerfull and don't kill
your wrists

> I'm overjoyed to have finally escaped from Vi, just as I was happy to lose
> 'ed' all those years ago. Doesn't anyone else want to move with the times, or
> am I some sort of techo-mobile weirdo?

I like to think I move with the times ... I wouldn't use the original vi ...
really .. I use vim .. since it has syntax highlighting ... interprets make
output, uses X, mouse .... I don't see how I'm staying behind the times ...

nedit has one advantage ... and that it's faster to learn and easier to use 
for people that aren't touch typists ... most fast typists I know use vi or
emacs because it's WAY faster to use it then other editors ...

so that's why vi/emacs/??? bindings would be a nice addition to gtk text
widget and entry widget ... since they'd simplify many people's lives ...
I for one don't wanna deal with several different keybindings ... I want
vi keybindings on all the programs I use.  I won't switch to nedit just
because you say it's better ... it's not for me ... I suck at using non-vi
editors .... I also would like to use the same editor wheather I'm in X
or on the console or sshed to my box ... plus I remote administer my server
over someimes a shitty connection ... vi is very nice in cases of bad
connections since you can tye command and movements since you know exactly
what they'll do ... you can't do that with arrow keys unless you are very
good at counting

George

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
George Lebl <jirka@5z.com> http://www.5z.com/jirka/
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