[SunRescue] Pico Forever!!!

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Tuesday, March 6, 2001 at 11:05:21 (-0800), Chris Byrne wrote: ]
> Subject: [SunRescue] Pico Forever!!!
>
> But for simple text editing like email or readme files, there is no need
> to load up something the size of emacs, and vi is unnecisarily complicated
> for beginners to use.

I don't know....  You can (and I have) taught total computer newbies to
do useful things in both emacs and vi in a matter of a few minutes.  The
problem most teachers have is showing off all the fancy tricks when all
a newbie really wants is to type some text and to correct his mistakes,
just like on a typewriter, but with a working backspace.

As for loading up emacs, well you're only really supposed to do that
once when you login and then keep using the same session over and over
for everything (unless you have your own personal high-powered
workstation, I guess).

> Pico is relativley small, simple, and users can generally figure it out
> without extensive tech support. I deal with a lot of UNIX beginners when
> I teach security classes, and years of experience have taught me that subjecting
> these folks to vi or emacs is just not worth the headache for either of
> us.

Pico is, IMNSHO, a piece of crap.  It's apparently somewhat based on
micro-emacs, but they went and changed all the user-interface for no
good reason.  If you want a decent small editor then why not choose a
true stripped down emacs, such as jove, micro-emacs, or mg (or its
Japanese sibling ng)?

Once you learn the very basic emacs key commands (about 6 are
necessary), you can use many other editors too, including many
command-line editors and many tiny editors in many applications
(Netscape, tcl/tk, etc., etc., etc.).

> I agree with the "experts" who always say that you should learn vi because
> it's on jsut about every system, IF you are a UNIX admin, or plan on using
> UNIX extensivley. But for the many people out there who only use UNIX occaisonally
> (and with great pain) I think pico is the right editor for them.

The problem with that is that pico is rarely installed anywhere.

The reason to learn vi is not if you plan on using Unix extensively, but
if you plan on using it at all ever.  Vi is the only editor (other than
ed) that can be guaranteed to be everywhere, at least in some form or
another.

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

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