Re: [tlug] How to use FF's shortcuts [C&C?]

["Josh Glover" <jmglov@example.com>]

On 09/08/2007, Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com> wrote:

> It has one serious failure which drove me up the wall: it puts the
> cursor on characters that don't exist. Specifically, the non-existent
> character after the last character of the line.

Interesting. I feel the same way about vi, 'cept in reverse; I want
the cursor to show me where the next character will be inserted.

Couldn't you easily fix this? Or (and this question is probably one
for Steve or Dave Brown), is cursor-handling hard-coding in [X]Emacs?

> In general, watching what appear to me to be good Emacs users, I find
> them banging on or holding down arrow keys and the like quite a lot more
> than I do.

Hrm... too bad you missed Steve's demo at the last tech meeting. Then
again, Steve has promised to do more of a workflow demo via video
conference for an upcoming tech meeting.

Would you, or another vi ninja on the list, be willing to do a vi demo?

> Then again, for most users, the whole point may be moot. My friend Perry
> Metzger once claimed to me that you will never become a good Emacs user
> if you didn't learn it before you were fifteen, and I can believe the
> same of vi.

I completely agree. I learned Emacs at Uni (I was 18 or so, not 15,
but I see the point) and never really looked back. Obviously, since I
worked as a sysadmin, I had to learn vi, but it never became my weapon
of choice because I already knew Emacs much better.

> It would be an interesting, if painful, experiment for me to learn to
> use Emacs efficiently.

Same for me and vi, though I am always trying to pick up neat tips
(thanks, Jim T!) for vi, because I do use it enough to care about
efficiency.

> It's not likely to happen because what expert
> Emacs user is likely to want to stand around behind me for several weeks
> answering questions such as, "how do I move to the space before third
> instance of the word 'foo' ahead of the cursor and replace the rest of
> the the paragraph with a period?"

Hrm. I started this table:

http://www.jmglov.net/unix/vi-for-emacs-users.html

years ago, and have not done a very good job of keeping it up to date.
However, I just gifted it to our wiki:

http://www.tlug.jp/wiki/Linux_Help:Editors:Vi_for_Emacs_Users

Maybe the serious [X]Emacs and Vi[m] users on this list can flesh this
out and make it a decent resource. And while we're at it, we should
do:

http://www.tlug.jp/wiki/Linux_Help:Editors:Emacs_for_Vi_Users

-- 
Cheers,
Josh