----- Original Message ----- From: "Albert E. Sten-Clanton" <albert.e.sten_clanton@xxxxxxxxxxx> To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup at braille.uwo.ca> Sent: Thursday, November 01, 2007 9:41 AM Subject: Re: editors >I started with Emacs, but mostly use vi--or, more precisely, vim. You can >screw yourself royally if you forget what mode you're in. Also, I've found >that, unlike with Emacs, I don't hear what I'm backspacing over. Those are >the drawbacks I live with regularly. As long as I remember what mode I'm >in, though, I find it much easier to move around a document in vim than in >Emacs, easier to copy and paste blocks of text, and much easier to change >the settings that kick in when I start it. (I still don't know how to set >autofill on or the line length to wrap at permanently in Emacs: it's >doubtless somewhere in the manual, but sure not easy to find.) Also, I find >the Emacs keystrokes often a nuisance, especially especially because >there's only one working alt key, which apparently is a Linux thing. > Wow, that's interesting. Don't take this as a criticism by any means but I've never heard of anyone switching from emacs to vi. Although, I've sort of done that myself. I used emacspeak for years. But now that I primarily use speakup, I use vi as my editor. Emacs is hard. I guess so is vi in it's own way. Actually, what I usually do is edit files remotely on a Windows machine. I use a tool called sftpdrive. You can map a Windows drive letter to a machine that runs ssh and edit files like they were on any other network share. Very slick. One thing bad about linux editorsYou have to learn them. I can switch from notepad to TextPad to UltraEdit without having to figure out what keystrokes to use with each program. Home puts you at the beginning of the line. Shift+cursordown marks the line. Shift+Del cuts the line. Shift+Ins pastes it. Control+f,s saves the file. They all have their own keys for the fancy stuff but you can do the basics without learning anything about the editor.
