editor-p@cca.UUCP (06/05/83)
>From cbosgd!mark@cca-unix Sun Jun 5 05:20:15 1983
You can flame all you want about modeless editors (ala EMACS) vs
moded editors (ala vi). I think a poll would show that 99.9% of
those whose first screen editor was modeless hate moded editors, and
99.9% of those whose first screen editors was moded hate modeless
editors. It's a highly religious issue.
I read that the most common operation is inserting text, and that
therefore printing characters should be self inserting. I don't know
where this person gets his statistics, but I don't believe them for a
minute.
Text editors are used for three major purposes:
(a) Text entry. This is where you type in your program/document/file
from scratch. In this case, certainly you are doing input almost all
the time, and a modeless editor probably has the advantage.
(b) Text editing. This is where you have an existing file and are
making changes to it. I claim that commands are likely to dominate
text typed in, but don't have any measurements to prove it. Either
this category is a toss-up, or moded editors have the advantage.
(c) File viewing. This is where you use your editor to look at a
file, but don't make any modifications. (This case probably accounts
for less than 10% of all text editing.) In this case, the moded
editor has a strong advantage.
Of course, the answer is not to have two editors; people go nuts
changing editors. The answer is to have an editor that does well in
both (a) and (b) modes. Neither vi nor EMACS is satisfactory in this
respect. vi should allow more commands in input mode than just ^H,
^W, and ^U; EMACS should have a sticky control lock.