Use of ``vi'' for business office word-processing

[Lord Kahless]

> 	In my humble :-) opinion, I cannot think of any editor more universally
> useful than ``vi''	Am I WRONG in advising people to stay with ``vi''
> and not spend money for "word-processing software" in the BUSINESS APPLICATION
> environment?
> 	In my travels I have taken a cursory look at various word-processing
> packages for UNIX machines, and do not find their operation or command set any
> more intuitive than ``vi''.
> For three or four secretaries (and to allow
> for growth), I am inclined to recommend a 3B2 or NCR Tower XP as the most
> COST-EFFECTIVE means of implementing a multi-user system.  Comments, anyone?
> 
> ==>  UUCP:  {allegra|decvax|rocksanne|rocksvax|watmath}!sunybcs!kitty!larry

What?  Hey, I'm sitting on a tower right now, and I generally like the
tower. But...

I teach UNIX part time, and I can tell you that vi is NOT intuitive.
There are no easy menus.  There isn't a help button.  There isn't
even a help function at all.

Compare vi to a Mac.  You get into the thing, move around with your
mouse, and plug in your text.  You say you can do more on a UNIX
system.  True.  But 99% of the time people don't need, or even want
those extra capabilities.  They just want to slap in their text and
get a reasonably pretty document.

I've seen campus departments which tried to get their secretaries to
use the campus UNIX systems with nroff.  Believe me, it was generally
a disaster.  Nroff is too complicated, too powerful, and has really
terrible documentation.  Vi suffers from the same problem.

If you want multi-user, get a lot of Macs If you want to go with
something cheap, a bunch of networked PC clones from Zenith or
Leading Edge or Sperry or NCR will put you up for less, and have
more expansion capability.

Also, a Mac doesn't require any complicated system administration,
file system checking, etc.  While the tower is definitely the easiest
UNIX system to manage that I've ever seen, a Mac is much easier.
-- 
These views do not necessarily reflect those of the Imperial Propoganda
Division, The Klingon Empire, or our Emperor.