* Re: [9fans] text editor @ 2002-04-26 9:49 nigel 2002-04-26 10:21 ` Alexander Viro 2002-04-29 9:36 ` [9fans] text editor Andrew Stitt 0 siblings, 2 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: nigel @ 2002-04-26 9:49 UTC (permalink / raw) To: 9fans [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1210 bytes --] Sorry, Plan 9 does not use cursor keys in editing, not even for left/right. This is a design decision. Plan 9 use the mouse as it's main form of interaction. The keyboard, you might say, is an necessary evil for the entry of characters, but not much else. Everything in acme is done using the mouse apart for text entry (and acme does everything). To recap the logic (it has been repeated many times in the archives), once you switch to mouse centric operation, you become faster, not slower. It may be counterintuitive, but I believe it has been shown by research, not that I can quote anything. You have to move your hands to get to the cursor keys, so it's a whole bunch better if your default position is holding the mouse as it does lots of things besides positioning the cursor. We've all been keyboard centric at one time in our lives, and I think I speak for the vast majority of the list when I say that we don't miss cursor keys. At all. In fact, quite a few people buy keyboards without cursor keys, function keys, windows keys, number pads and reclaim a good square foot of their desk. So, stick with it, persevere, and you'll hopefully feel the benefit. Nigel [-- Attachment #2: Type: message/rfc822, Size: 2022 bytes --] From: Andrew Stitt <astitt@cats.ucsc.edu> To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: [9fans] text editor Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2002 08:47:09 GMT Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.96.1020425205816.12869A-100000@teach.ic.ucsc.edu> hey, Im just getting into plan 9, and Im in desperate need of a text editor that can deal with a keyboard intensive user, I dont like having to reach over and touch my mouse everytime i want to move the cursor, it seems as if any keyboard arrow keys just effect the overall window, not the cursor address. Ive tried to read up on acme and sam and I dont see anything that really addresses this. Are there keyboard commands to move the cursor around or am i stuck having to fondle my mouse everytime i want to move my cursor back two characters? thanks Andrew/A Frayed Knot ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] text editor 2002-04-26 9:49 [9fans] text editor nigel @ 2002-04-26 10:21 ` Alexander Viro 2002-04-26 11:38 ` Michael Grunditz 2002-04-26 20:35 ` Dan Cross 2002-04-29 9:36 ` [9fans] text editor Andrew Stitt 1 sibling, 2 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Alexander Viro @ 2002-04-26 10:21 UTC (permalink / raw) To: 9fans On Fri, 26 Apr 2002 nigel@9fs.org wrote: > To recap the logic (it has been repeated many times in the archives), > once you switch to mouse centric operation, you become faster, not > slower. It may be counterintuitive, but I believe it has been shown > by research, not that I can quote anything. You have to move your > hands to get to the cursor keys ..... unless you have sensible mappings for them - hjkl works fine, as far as I'm concerned. Not to (re)start religious wars, but... mouse pretty much requires visual feedback. I.e. you need to watch the screen while you are using it. Which is bloody inconvenient in a lot of situations. FWIW, I still prefer vi, but using sam as extended ed works for me... ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] text editor 2002-04-26 10:21 ` Alexander Viro @ 2002-04-26 11:38 ` Michael Grunditz 2002-04-26 20:35 ` Dan Cross 1 sibling, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Michael Grunditz @ 2002-04-26 11:38 UTC (permalink / raw) To: 9fans I am a rather new plan9 user and the first time I installed it I was very confused , I was like you , used to cmd line unix editors. In my second try I actualy tried to learn acme, and after hacking the imap upas/fs a couple of hours with it I began to like it , acme. Now I dont have any cisc pc , but I have a RiscPC :), except a 68040 ql compatible , so no plan9 for me :( /Michael Grunditz In message <Pine.GSO.4.21.0204260613271.20558-100000@weyl.math.psu.edu> you wrote: > > > On Fri, 26 Apr 2002 nigel@9fs.org wrote: > > > To recap the logic (it has been repeated many times in the archives), > > once you switch to mouse centric operation, you become faster, not > > slower. It may be counterintuitive, but I believe it has been shown > > by research, not that I can quote anything. You have to move your > > hands to get to the cursor keys > > ... unless you have sensible mappings for them - hjkl works fine, as > far as I'm concerned. Not to (re)start religious wars, but... mouse > pretty much requires visual feedback. I.e. you need to watch the > screen while you are using it. Which is bloody inconvenient in a lot > of situations. FWIW, I still prefer vi, but using sam as extended ed > works for me... > ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] text editor 2002-04-26 10:21 ` Alexander Viro 2002-04-26 11:38 ` Michael Grunditz @ 2002-04-26 20:35 ` Dan Cross 2002-04-29 9:40 ` Douglas A. Gwyn 1 sibling, 1 reply; 8+ messages in thread From: Dan Cross @ 2002-04-26 20:35 UTC (permalink / raw) To: 9fans I've often wondered what blind Plan 9 users do, if there are any Plan 9 users who are blind. I know at least one well-respected computer scientist who is blind who lives inside a talking version of emacs he wrote. Perhaps that's the most suitable environment for his particular disability.... - Dan C. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] text editor 2002-04-26 20:35 ` Dan Cross @ 2002-04-29 9:40 ` Douglas A. Gwyn 2002-04-30 11:14 ` [9fans] serial mouse support Andrey S. Kukhar 0 siblings, 1 reply; 8+ messages in thread From: Douglas A. Gwyn @ 2002-04-29 9:40 UTC (permalink / raw) To: 9fans Dan Cross wrote: > I've often wondered what blind Plan 9 users do, ... I doubt there are any. At Geotronics we had a blind programmer who used a VersaBraille terminal (20- or 40-character linear Braille-bump strip, chorded keyboard) very effectively under 6th Ed. Unix in its monocase mode (X = x, \X = X). To work with CRTs she had to employ a tactile scanning device, very slow compared to sight. We tried a speaking terminal as an experiment, but it asn't very good. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* [9fans] serial mouse support 2002-04-29 9:40 ` Douglas A. Gwyn @ 2002-04-30 11:14 ` Andrey S. Kukhar 0 siblings, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Andrey S. Kukhar @ 2002-04-30 11:14 UTC (permalink / raw) To: 9fans Hi friends, When Plan 9 will support serial mouses, if never, why? -- wishes, -ask ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] text editor 2002-04-26 9:49 [9fans] text editor nigel 2002-04-26 10:21 ` Alexander Viro @ 2002-04-29 9:36 ` Andrew Stitt 2002-04-29 15:58 ` Douglas A. Gwyn 1 sibling, 1 reply; 8+ messages in thread From: Andrew Stitt @ 2002-04-29 9:36 UTC (permalink / raw) To: 9fans > left/right. This is a design decision. Plan 9 use the mouse as it's > main form of interaction. im quickly saddening, i somehow believed that plan 9 took the good ideas of unix and advanced once more on them, silly of me, now plan 9 looks startlingly like a mac...using primarily the mouse :'( > The keyboard, you might say, is an > necessary evil for the entry of characters, but not much else. isnt that how apple sees things? how is this better? how can this vastly improve my efficiency? it seems like its going backwards. maybe some numbers would help... > Everything in acme is done using the mouse apart for text entry (and > acme does everything). i can traverse a directory tree so much faster if you give me a keyboard then if you have me continously button2 click my way around in acme, wasnt one of the strongest points of *nix the idea that you can string command lines together freely? it seems like we are taking a step backwards. How is the mouse faster then a command line? > > To recap the logic (it has been repeated many times in the archives), > once you switch to mouse centric operation, you become faster, not > slower. so what you are trying to tell me is that the overhead of removing my right (or left) hand from the keyboard, placing it on my mouse and fondling with it until i point in just the right spot, then click, then place my hand on the keyboard again and resume typing is somehow faster then say the vi sequence 'esc kbbbhhi'. Im somehow missing the point, using the mouse is a needless interrupt, you waste time (brain cycles if you will) waiting for your arm to reposition your hand over the mouse, all the while having to locate that silly pointer, why not just move the silly cursor without moving your hand and just your fingers?. Ever since the industrial revolution we've known that if you stay in one place doing one thing you are much more efficient then having to move back and forth. Henry Ford noticed that if you have a guy digging a hole and he has to move from the hole, take 4 steps to the wheelbarrow and come back again, its much MUCH slower then if he was standing in one place and just rotating between the hole and wheelbarrow. >It may be counterintuitive, but I believe it has been shown > by research, not that I can quote anything. please do! I would like to see those facts. My facts are the obvious lessons of the industrial revolution and that out of 30 years of unix history and all the improvements that have been made, networking, memory management etc, none have been made to the user interface (substantially), vi and ed are still useful fast editors, just like they were when they first came out... > You have to move your > hands to get to the cursor keys much less then a whole foot to the mouse, but i use hjkl which are right underneath my right hand, you can move your fingers faster then your whole hand. Thats why most great guitarists have long fingers, its just easier. >, so it's a whole bunch better if your > default position is holding the mouse as it does lots of things > besides positioning the cursor. so i type with _just_ my left hand, got it! > > We've all been keyboard centric at one time in our lives, and I think > I speak for the vast majority of the list when I say that we don't > miss cursor keys. At all. In fact, quite a few people buy keyboards > without cursor keys, function keys, windows keys, number pads and > reclaim a good square foot of their desk. such as the happy hacking keyboard. Of course you have to look at the market, most of the users are probably vi users and are perfectly happy using hjkl as their arrow keys when editing. If you look at many of the early computer arcade style games, most of them use hjkl for direction. I play some emulated nintendo games with my gf on her computer and I remap my side of the keyboard to hjkl and let her have the cursor keys... > So, stick with it, persevere, and you'll hopefully feel the benefit. since i doubt I will ever see the great benefit in the mouse at least in the forseable future, can someone point me to some descent sam documentation? I cant seem to find much info on the keycommands you can give it. thanks Andrew ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: [9fans] text editor 2002-04-29 9:36 ` [9fans] text editor Andrew Stitt @ 2002-04-29 15:58 ` Douglas A. Gwyn 0 siblings, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Douglas A. Gwyn @ 2002-04-29 15:58 UTC (permalink / raw) To: 9fans Andrew Stitt wrote: > since i doubt I will ever see the great benefit in the mouse at least in > the forseable future, can someone point me to some descent sam > documentation? I cant seem to find much info on the keycommands you can > give it. If you can't even read the table of contents of Vol. 2 of the manual, why should we listen to your rants about man-machine interfaces? ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2002-04-30 11:14 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 8+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 2002-04-26 9:49 [9fans] text editor nigel 2002-04-26 10:21 ` Alexander Viro 2002-04-26 11:38 ` Michael Grunditz 2002-04-26 20:35 ` Dan Cross 2002-04-29 9:40 ` Douglas A. Gwyn 2002-04-30 11:14 ` [9fans] serial mouse support Andrey S. Kukhar 2002-04-29 9:36 ` [9fans] text editor Andrew Stitt 2002-04-29 15:58 ` Douglas A. Gwyn
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