C70:editor-people (08/12/82)
>From willson.uci@UDel-Relay Thu Aug 12 01:41:08 1982
This is in response to Mark Horton's request for good reasons why editors
shouldn't have too many commands. He feels that it is difficult to have
too many commands. I tend to agree except for one thing:
Most of the editors available these days that have lots of commands
(emacs, vi) are also screen editors. These editors (emacs and vi) both
allow a person to rebind a key-stroke sequence to mean something special
to the editor. My only problem with having lots of commands is that
I usually want to bind them to lots of keys. In fact, for both editors
the default situation is to have the commands bound to lots of keys.
This means that if I trip over the keyboard a little I have a fair chance
of executing a command that I know nothing about, least of all, how to
undo the effects of the command. For my customized emacs, I have unbound
a lot of keys. If I want the power of the command, then I spell it out.
I feel much safer working in this mode. Whaddya think?
Stephen Willson
University of California, Irvine
Programming Environments Project