vi vs. emacs

[Jay Garvin]

    Doug Gwyn  <gwyn at brl-smoke.arpa> writes:
>   > ^H is a mnemonic for `help', and makes as much sense as most editing
>   > commands.
>   Funny, mine says "BACK SPACE" right on the key cap.  That doesn't
>   suggest "help" to me...


	Emacs uses some commands  which are of  the form  Control + letter.
	^H  means hold down  the control  key  and  type  the letter  H.   
	'H' for	Help.  Does this make sense?  Some other commands are:

	Control-F for Forward  one character	Control-K for Kill line
	Control-B for Backward one character	Control-D for Delete forward
	Control-N for Next     line		Control-E for End of line
	Control-P for Previous line		Control-Q for Quote a char
	Control-S for Search			Control-O for Open new line
	Control-R for Reverse Search		Control-T for Transpose chars
	
	The guy who said that the  'BACK SPACE' meant 'Help' shouldn't have
	said it in that  way.  He was just  referring  to the fact that the
	backspace  key happens to  puts out  the ^H character too.  This is
	like saying that 'TAB' means  insert in some (hypothetical) editor:
	it   doesn't make  sense until you  realize  that TAB happens to be
	Control-I.

	My keyboard does not have  any key  labeled  'BACK SPACE'. I  have
	only  a key labeled 'Delete' and   it  puts  out  the ^? character
	(Control-question mark). 

	You might like to know  that the  previous gentleman's remark about
	'backward-delete-character' did not  have anything to do with paper
	tape and he was not implying that the original ASCII  DEL or RUBOUT
	characters did any backing up.  He was referring to the name of the
	FUNCTION  in emacs  which backs  up and  destructively erases   the
	character   to    the     Left  of   the   cursor.     It is called
	'backward-delete-character'.

	When I hit my  key labeled 'Delete', it calls   this  FUNCTION.  I
	could just as well tell  Emacs that I want some  *other* key to run
	this function instead.  In your instance, you  might prefer to have
	your  Backspace    key  (^H) invoke the 'delete-backward-character'
	function if your Backspace key is more conveniently located on your
	keyboard.  That's one of  the nicer things  about the Emacs editor:
	If you don't like it, CHANGE it.

	You really ought to give Emacs a chance, it's quite good and you
	might like it.


P.S.    Ok, I'll go along with things like vi's

		"ayL (Double-Quote-Small-a-Small-y-Capital-L) means:
		*Yank text from  cursor to end  of screen  into buffer "a"*

	      
	But don't pick on Control-H = Help too much until you can come up
	with a good story for why:

		ZZ (Capital-Z Capital-Z) is a good mnemonic for: 
		*Write (save) and quit file*.

		:-)	

		-Jay 

         egrep `echo "yaj|morf^|ahola" |rev` `echo sdrow/tcid/rsu/ |rev`

       /\   /\    /\    /\    ____/\   ____/\ 
      / /  / /   / /   / /   /\___\/  /\___\/ 
     / /  / /   /_/   / /   / /      / /                      Jay Garvin *    
    / /  / /   ____  / /   / /      / /              Computer Specialist *
   /_/  / /   / __/ / /   /_/      /_/               Computer Consultant *
 ______/ / __/ / __/ / ______/\ ______/\      
 \_____\/  \_\/  \_\/  \_____\/ \_____\/  
  University of Hawaii Computing Center    garvin at uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu *