Re: 2.18.2 - Thoughts so far

[David Kastrup]

Paul Scott <address@hidden> writes:

> On Sun, Oct 04, 2015 at 07:51:49AM +0200, David Kastrup wrote:
>> Paul Scott <address@hidden> writes:
>> 
>> > On Sat, Oct 03, 2015 at 10:00:39PM -0400, PMA wrote:
>> >> Hear, hear!
>> >> 
>> >> Ivan Kuznetsov wrote:
>> >> >Do yourself a serious favor and learn vi
>> >
>> > Or Emacs!
>> 
>> At the current point of time, I find LilyPond-mode not a convincing case
>> for using Emacs.  I am using LilyPond-mode in order to use Emacs (as I
>> use it for everything, and it's a reasonably good deal when you do
>> that), but I don't think I'd be using Emacs in order to use
>> LilyPond-mode.
>> 
>> vi is a nice compact skill set to have (basically, you need to learn a
>> one-page help sheet or vi will be horrible, but the one page is enough)
>> whenever Emacs is not yet booted either on your computer or the user's
>> mind.
>
> I hate a modal editor like vi where I have to remember whether I'm in
> edit mode or enter data mode.

It's a good tradeoff for touch typists.  The farthest you ever need to
reach is the Escape key (admittedly a longer reach on many keyboards of
today than of vi's creation time) and you don't need to hold down
control for extended times which helps with hand strain, these days a
rather relevant problem with many prolific programmers.

I used vi before Emacs was usefully available and it's a reasonable
deal.  Nowadays a bit harder to discover since current day vi clones and
probably even the original have started to support cursor keys, and not
just that, but also support them in insert mode.

That kind of muddles the underlying concept where forgetting the mode
you were in was not really much of an option since either mode had to
rely on the same keys.

-- 
David Kastrup