Re: Vowel with Umlaut

[David Kastrup]

David Rogers <address@hidden> writes:

> David Kastrup <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> "GRAEME F ST CLAIR" <address@hidden> writes: 
>>
>>> Well, I plowtered (Scottish word) around with jEdit, but didn't get
>>> much where, so I recovered a Windows Emacs from backup, that I'd
>>> never got round to trying, installed it and got exactly nowhere
>>> with that either - like vi, "It's a Unix thang, I wouldn't
>>> understand"... 
>>
>> "Recovering a Windows Emacs from backup" is probably not the best
>> idea since it is under furious development (surprisingly so for a 30
>> year old piece of software) and a lot of focus is on making it less
>> of "a Unix thang". 
>>
>> If you want to give it a fair try, you should install a reasonably
>> current version.  It won't be easier to understand, but you'll be
>> able to do a lot even without understanding.  Are you married? 
>
> :)
>
> I'm using Emacs now, and have been for only a few months. The first
> few days I was more or less lost, but just as David Kastrup says, I've
> been able to do what I need without really understanding very much. I
> tried Emacs a few years ago and got nowhere, and the newer versions
> are (in my opinion) MUCH better for a person who's new to it.

When I started with Emacs, the first time you typed Backspace, nothing
happened.  Repeat that, and help screens replaced your work area.

Type Escape, and other strange things happened.

It was about a tie between Emacs and vi.  vi had about two different
modes, one of them beeping at you, one of them destroying your text.  If
your termcap and term were set up right, you could see which was which
by looking at the cursor.

But those were times where you could hand a soldering iron to about any
programmer and he would knew which end not to chew on.

Emacs has improved the user experience considerably.  Nobody uses vi
proper anymore, but its successors are usually called the same (except
in their birth certificate) and offer a few more modes for destroying
text and beeping.

Established users of either of those editors have tried the other kind
last when use of either was reason for divorce and institutionalization,
so they will paint a somewhat dire picture.  As a result, both maintain
their reputation since if even the oldtimers using $x (God beware!)
decry $y, no sane person would ever...

Ah, the editor wars.  Those were times when you knew what to do when
hearing a key click.

-- 
David Kastrup