Joel Goldstick <joel.goldst...@gmail.com> writes: > On Sat, Jun 18, 2016 at 8:12 PM, Lawrence D’Oliveiro > <lawrenced...@gmail.com> wrote: >> On Sunday, June 19, 2016 at 11:07:23 AM UTC+12, Michael Torrie wrote: >>> >>> On 06/17/2016 05:52 PM, Chris via Python-list wrote: >>>> >>>> Any suggestions for a good open source text editor for the Mac out >>>> there? For now, I am going to stick with vim. >>> >>> Good choice. >> >> The trouble with vim/vi/whatever, is that it doesn’t work like any >> other editor on Earth. >> >> Pull up any old GUI-based editor you like, for example Windows >> (shudder) Notepad. If there are N characters in your file, then the >> insertion point can be placed at N + 1 positions: in-between two >> adjacent characters, or before the first character, or after the last >> character. And this makes sense: anything you type is inserted at the >> insertion point. All rational text editors (and word processors) work >> this way. >> >> But not vi/vim. It only lets you place your cursor *on* a character, >> not *in-between* characters. That’s why you need two separate >> insertion commands, insert-before and insert-after. And one of those >> has the interesting side effect where, if you exit insertion mode >> without inserting anything, it doesn’t put you back in the same >> position as before. Why? >> >> As to why you need insertion commands at all, that’s another thing... >> -- >> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list > > I personally love vim. But its clearly an acquired taste. When you > get good at it its pretty amazing -- and no mouse. The other thing > about vim is that it is on every linux system, so you don't have to > load your editor if you are ssh-ing to some machine
Both emacs and vim are powerful tools in the hands of experienced users but I would recommend neither to someone starting out who is just looking for a code-aware editor. Emacs and vim are much more than editors. I'm composing this message using Emacs/Gnus on a Mac. TRAMP is invaluable to me for my daily work. -- Pete Forman -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
