harrison@utfyzx.uucp (David Harrison) (04/03/89)
I am seeking advice about editors for a particular application:
1. Undergraduate Physics Laboratory students, many computer naive,
some cyberphobes.
2. 1500 users, so all instruction in how to use the editor must
happen on-line.
3. Students should be able to create a dataset or text file and
start getting useful work out of our applications in minutes;
spending an hour learning how to use an editor is inconsistent
with our educational mandate.
4. A variety of ASCII terminals.
5. UNIX.
At present my students use a truly awful menu-driven line editor I
wrote. We offer vi, emacs and ed for those that know how to use
them; hardly anybody does.
We do not have and don't anticipate ever having mice, bit-mapped screens,
pull-down menus, all of which would make my task much easier; the
reason for this is financial.
This Summer I may be writing a full-screen editor (or hacking on
vi and/or emacs and/or ...). It seems clear that I need simplicity
more than power; there are many powerful editors already. Design
issues include:
(a) Dual mode ala vi, or single mode ala emacs. The former seems
to imply command windows to remind the users where they are, the
latter model implies control and escape sequences for commands.
(b) The range of available commands. A list might include:
help, insert, append, goto line #, goto string, delete char,
delete line, write and quit.
More power implies harder-to-use, less power implies less power.
What should be in the list?
(c) Most of our applications deal with columns of numbers, so the
editor will probably have a mode in which that is all it accepts.
If this were the only application a single-mode editor would
allow the letters on a keyboard to be commands, but our students
also do text for formal reports and having them use two different
editors may just confuse them.
(d) For data mode, I sort of like the look of screens where the cursor
begins right justified in the column, and as numbers are entered the
display moves one column to the left; some of my colleagues dislike
that display, preferring a display that looks more like what is
happening as I enter *this* text with vi.
(e) The old Wang editor was modelled on a typewriter (maybe the new ones
are too, I haven't seen one). But many students can't type, and
the typewriter is getting to be a fairly obsolete pile of metal.
I liked that editor but wonder if the model is useful today.
And what can I use on a variety of terminals that will intuitively
correspond to the knob on the roller of a typewriter?
(f) Either BACKSPACE or DELETE will erase the character under the cursor:
this is not negotiable!
(g) I find that I can't remember function key assignments for any
application unless I use it every day. So I tend to dislike the
idea of using them for this editor.
Finally(!), I don't hang out in the PC world so if you know of a program
whose editor provides an interesting model I would appreciate hearing
about it; if it is a standard program I can get access to it to see for
myself, otherwise a description would be appreciated. At the moment the
latest release of the venerable Spreadsheet Calculator sc is influencing
my thinking about editors very strongly.
--
David Harrison | "God does not play dice with
Dept. of Physics, Univ of Toronto | the universe." -- Einstein
UUCP: uunet!attcan!utgpu!utfyzx!harrison | "Quit telling God what to
BITNET: HARRISON@UTORPHYS | do." -- Neils Bohrm1tag00@fed.frb.gov (Tim A. Grunwald) (04/05/89)
The Research and Statistics division of the Federal Reserve Board, has recently ported many mainframe applications to a Sun network. SPF has been the editor of choice on the mainframe. The editor we chose for the Sun network was Gnu Emacs. Gnu Emacs can be difficult to learn if not approached in the correct manner. We rebound common editing commands to function keys, including their shifted and controlled settings. Clear function key templates were designed and given to each user, along with reference cards and the Gnu Emacs manual. Most everyone was able to use Gnu Emacs productively using just the function key template. With the great on line help facility (including the whole GNU Emacs manual) users can master the more complicated commands at their own speed. We have found GNU Emacs to be a relatively easy editor for novice users to pick up quickly. Tim Grunwald Federal Reserve Board, Washington, DC, 20551 uucp: uunet!fed!m1tag00 internet: m1tag00@fed.frb.gov
ronald@rt15.cs.wisc.edu (Ronald Peterson) (04/07/89)
SPF provides an interesting model for a screen based editor. A version for PC's is available from Command Technology and I beleive there are some Unix versions available. It gives a busy screen with line numbers with several modes. Commands can be entered on the command line or line oriented commands can be entered over the line numbers. The normal mode is typeover with an insert mode available. The function keys are used for scrolling on line help, and exiting. On the PC the scrolling keys on the numeric keypad are functional. There may be some performance problems with low baud rates, because of the necessity to repaint the screen. Also, sophisticated searching is not available.
gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu (04/08/89)
Learning an editor is like learning to hold a pencil. Once you know
how, you don't want to learn a new way.
Can you offer GNU emacs in all your courses? It is available on many
UNIX machines, and has been ported to many types of computers. If you
want to hack, you can add some extremely nice features, like function
indenting / compile keys, paragraph justification / spelling checking,
etc, to help out the students. I really appreciate the way emacs will
match parenthesis for you, when you're typing in a complicated
expression. This will help your students focus on what they're doing,
not on silly typing mistakes.
On the other hand, VI is available on nearly every computer system.
It's free, and you get what you pay for 8-).
Don Gillies, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Illinois
1304 W. Springfield, Urbana, Ill 61801
ARPA: gillies@cs.uiuc.edu UUCP: {uunet,harvard}!uiucdcs!gillies