From: frain@cis.ksu.edu (Jerry Frain)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: IS UNIX DEAD? (very long)
Date: 20 Nov 92 20:32:48 GMT
Organization: Kansas State University
NNTP-Posting-Host: depot.cis.ksu.edu

papresco@napier.uwaterloo.ca (Paul Prescod) writes:

> >Friendliness and easiness to use varies from user to user.  So use the
> >editor you find friendly, and let others use the editor they find
> >friendly, and quit yer bitchin'.

> The point is, until I learned to FTP, make and run,

Well, I wouldn't want you to have to learn anything.  On any other
system you'd have to learn to contact a software vendor or go to a
software store and pay big $$ for your favorite editor.  Personally, I
prefer ftp.

> I didn't have any choice OTHER then vi or emacs.

There's always ed, and ex.  Or cat, the one true editor.

> And I'm lucky I even know about emacs.  As a new user, the computer
> SHOULD have defaulted to an easier text editor.

The *computer* doesn't default to *anything*; whoever set up your
account and environment variables set your default editor.  If your
default environment is not in order, complain to the person who set it
up (yourself, if applicable), instead of complaining to the whole
USENET community.

And whatever editor you invoke from the shell is also your "default"
editor -- that's your fault.

>>BTW, I use GNU Emacs (on my UNIX box), which beats the snot out
>>anything that runs on a DOS thing, as well as vi.

> I'm fairly certain there is emacs for dos,

I'm fairly certain it is crippled.

> >Any program that might run on a variety of terminals and relies on the
> >existence of function keys is inherently crippled.

> This argument is illogical!

Wrong.  Premise: program P *relies* on F keys (that's what my above
"argument" stated) and program P may be run from terminals that don't
have function keys.  Conclusion: program P is crippled on terminals
that don't have function keys.  Simple logic.

> Right now we have no standard help key.  I propose a key that exists
> on 97% of computer/terminal keyboards.  You complain about the other
> 3%.

Well, first I'd like to know where you got your 97% figure.  Then I
would like to point out that F keys may not (hopefully won't) be
around forever.  F keys are nonintuitive junk.  If you cared one whit
about user friendliness for novice users, you certainly wouldn't go
around advocating the use of F keys.  You probably like Word Perfect,
too.

> Surely adding support for F keys doesn't have to remove support
> from computers that don't have fkeys, does it?

It does if the program *relies* on F keys.

> >F1 is not an intuitive label, I don't see the need for it AT ALL in
> >the world of "user friendliness".  Certainly a key labelled "help"
> >makes much more sense (though not in the context of UNIX).

> Unfortunately few keyboards have such a key.  If it becomes enough
> of a standard, though, some keyboards might have an F1/help key.

That's a poor argument.  Either do it right, or don't do it at all.
This half-compromise that F1 is the closest thing to "help" is
hogwash.  Help keys are becoming more common all the time; abolish the
F keys altogether on "normal user" keyboards (I'd still like to see
programmable F-keys on "techie" keyboards).

Jerry Frain