From: martelli@cadlab.sublink.org (Alex Martelli)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: VI??? GROSS!
Date: 19 Nov 92 10:40:52 GMT
Organization: CAD.LAB S.p.A., Bologna, Italia

lachlan@dmp.csiro.au (Lachlan Cranswick) writes:
	...
:simple editor I have just given to site users
:is PICO.  It really is very simple and users didn't
:believe there could ever be a simple editor for UNIX but they
:have been proved wrong.  It is also public domain software.

I second the recommendation for PICO; it is what I have installed
at home for my wife and kids to use.  My son is outgrowing it
after a week, but then he's almost 10 years old and has a quick
technical-oriented mind; he's noticed how my fingers fly and
move and delete and change text FAST on vi, and he's eager to
learn.  For my daughter (not quite 8-year old yet) and my wife
(a humanities professor) PICO is about the right tradeoff level
between complexity (about none at all) and features (few but well
selected; the always-visible menu and modeless operation help).

:It is very easy to get elm to use it as its default editor
:and you can make nn use PICO as its default editor by putting
:the line
:
:setenv EDITOR /bin/pico  (or wherever the editor is)

A warning on nn configuration: the INTERNAL variable editor, if
set, takes priority over the environment variable EDITOR, so
check the nn startup files (system and user's) if exporting
an EDITOR variable set to pico's path should not "work".

:One of the indicators on how much average users hate vi
:is that some of the site users were editing their
:documents in a simple DOS editor, then uploading
:it to the unix machine.  Is this comomon on other
:sites that use UNIX.

I notice rather often people moving files around to edit them
on some other platform, particularly when NFS sharing of
filesystems makes it more convenient, but also with ftp.
A DOS machine guarantees some advantages (totally consistent
response time, for example), so I myself have on occasion
ftp'd Unix files, edited them on a PC (with vi itself, of
course), and ftp'd them back!  This becomes far more important
when, instead of an Ethernet in between, one has a terminal
emulation going on some modem thing, maybe 2400 bps even!
Then, a compress+zmodem from the host Unix machine to the
PC emulating the terminal, then a PC editing session (with a
PC version of vi, by choice), then a compress+zmodem right
back, becomes BY FAR the fastest way to proceed!  Thus I see
no indication at all, afforded by such behaviour, that there
is any vi-hating going on; indeed as I have indicated I do
such things even if what I have is vi on both sides!!!

That said, no doubt some persons grow just too affectionate
to a specific editor - for example I see people using SET HOST
on VMS to be able to edit (remotely) with ED, if one machine
only has EVE/TPU available, and DESPITE the fact that the
latter can be set to 99% correct emulation of the former!

:The most extreme case was for email.  The person edited
:his letter in MS WORD 5.0 for DOS.  Saving the final copy as
:a text file.  Then uploading it via serial line to the UNIX
:machine to mail off.

Yes, it's PARTICULARLY nice to do so (with compression and
a good filetransfer protocol, of course) when the connection
is other a slow/noisy serial line, since on-host editing can
then become unbearable (no matter what the host editor).  I
thus don't see anything necessarily extreme about this.

:This question was part of the is UNIX dead flamewar on comp.unix.questions
:but if UNIX is so good compared to DOS - and DOS is the bottom of the barrel -
:how come you never seem to find new DOS users uploading their text files
:to a UNIX machine to edit.  This seems to imply UNIX has some big

Maybe YOU never seem to find that, but I do!  It's exactly what happened
when many people around here *were* new to DOS - they'd go out of their
way to do as much as possible on the Unix side!  I then installed MKS
Toolkit (Korn Shell, vi, everything) and the phenomenon abated since
MOST things you can now do *identically* in Dos or Unix.  Still it does
happen, when something *tricky* must be done as part of the editing,
that gets done better or faster by tools available on the Unix side of
things only; NFS makes it almost painless then.

:failings with common users.  And no - the fact that you can get vi for DOS
:is not the only answer!!  

vi IS hard - I think I did the right thing in not pushing my 7-year old
daughter to learn it, with PICO she can enjoy writing on our home
"play"station much more; a clever 9-years-old, however, particularly
one with any bent at all for techie things, like my son, IS mature
for vi.
"bent" has MUCH to do with it: my wife is a VERY intelligent person, as
shown for example by her summa cum laude degree in Hindi studies, yet
she was finding it a torture to learn and use vi - with pico, she does
plod along successfully.  She simply does NOT want to learn ANYthing
about computers, just USE them.  An iconic environment, as opposed to
a command line, she finds to be HORRIBLE, since she cannot jot down a
sequence of commands to do to perform a task; the BEST thing is a menu
system, tailored for a few things which are exactly the ones she needs
to perform.  No doubt other "naive users" have other problems yet, for
example not all will be so heavily verbally-oriented as to find a
graphical environment a problem, indeed most will prefer it to judge
by the market success of GUI's.  I think the human factors group would
be better as a forum for this discussion, though...

:At least with some very kind people writing
:simple editors for UNIX, new users will not be turned off immediately
:after they try to edit a text file.

Yup, and menuing systems (that can be tailored by a knowledgeable
person to the "new user"'s needs, so the latter need not learn
anything more) are just as important, I believe.  Many users will
grow from that to a more mature usage (vi, etc), such as my son;
many won't.
-- 
Email: martelli@cadlab.sublink.org                   Phone: ++39 (51) 6130360
CAD.LAB s.p.a., v. Ronzani 7/29, Casalecchio, Italia   Fax: ++39 (51) 6130294 
Newsgroups: comp.editors