[OpenIndiana-discuss] Graphical Desktop environment on server

[David Brodbeck]

On Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 11:33 PM, Richard L. Hamilton <rlhamil at smart.net>
wrote:

> PS yes, vi is a PITA to learn, (I had to learn vi decades ago having
> previously used early incarnations of the much friendlier Rand Editor), but
> as a general purpose editor, once you _have_ learned it, you can work
> faster with it than with most others.
>

vi's biggest stumbling block is that it's modal, which isn't true of any
other editor commonly in use today.  vim at least improves on this a little
by letting you move the cursor and delete text without switching out of
input mode; without that editing becomes very slow and tedious, because
you're constantly switching modes back and forth.

Personally, I like to install a more friendly text editor on my systems.
I've warmed up to emacs after disliking it for a long time, and often use
it, but it's pretty heavyweight.  If I can't justify all the dependencies I
usually go with joe.  I'm not a fan of nano because it lacks a 'jump to the
bottom of the file' command.

Of course, it's still necessary to learn vi, because it somehow became the
only editor you'll always find, even on emergency recovery disks.

-- 
D. Brodbeck
System Administrator, Linguistics
University of Washington
GPG key fingerprint: 0DB7 4B50 8910 DBC5 B510 79C4 3970 2BC3 2078 D875