-------- Forwarded Message -------- From: Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: Rob <lau@xxxxxxxxx> Cc: linux-audio-user <linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Subject: Re: light weight, full featured desktop for audio Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2013 14:36:53 +0100 On Fri, 2013-02-22 at 14:23 +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote: > On Fri, 2013-02-22 at 08:09 -0500, Rob wrote: > > On 02/22/2013 03:47 AM, david wrote: > > >>>> dwm has both idiosyncrasies and a learning curve, but so too do most > > >>>> "expert" pieces of software. vim and emacs are the canonical examples, > > > Being hard to learn doesn't make something an "expert" piece of software - > > > unless you're talking about a *field* that requires lots of expertise such > > > as rocket science. Text editing isn't rocket science. A text editor > > > shouldn't be as hard to learn as rocket science. ;-) > > > > What makes something an "expert" piece of software is simply that it's not > > aimed at the layman. vi, emacs and dwm were meant for software developers > > and system administrators to use. And a musician who's also one of those > > things will probably be able to figure out those programs. A musician who > > isn't should probably use leafpad or something like that. Anything more > > involved and they're not going to be able to figure out how to turn on > > syntax highlighting, regular expression search and replace, autocompletion, > > etc. anyway. > > > > Text editing isn't rocket science, but when vi and emacs were originally > > written, it was computer science. Since then it's just been 30-40 years of > > iteration to make them more capable without much thought to whether someone > > accustomed to Windows Notepad could use them. I've used both for about 25 > > years, and have no use for the (to me ill-advised) menu extensions that > > don't really help noobs use them while taking up space on my screen that > > could be used for one or two more lines of code. > > > > For those poor laymen who have to edit files from the command line, we have > > nano now. I still get questions from people who allegedly have degrees in > > my field about functions that are prominently displayed in its little menu > > at the bottom of the screen. Instead of reading the screen, they've been > > trained to look for File/Save. > > > > Software meant for the layman but that's difficult to use, on the other > > hand, is just poorly-written software. (Expert software can be bad too, > > but usually that doesn't last 30 years.) > > > > Rob > > I'm not accustomed to Windows editors, in the past I used all kinds of > complicated editors, such as the first C64 Assembler editors, C editors > for DR DOS etc., but today I expect more comfort. I'm not aware about > syntax highlighting for Leafpad or that it can be used by the command > line. I neither program professional, nor just for interest, but I need > a command line editor to set up *NIX systems and for doing this I expect > an intuitive to use editor, such as mcedit. PS: Nano isn't available for all minimal Linux and not available for the FreeBSD basic system. It's hard enough that I always have to start with a wrong keyboard map. Editors such as Nano often have to be installed, the default often is vi(m), so before you can install Nano you often need to use vi(m) first. _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
