Re: [9fans] sam vs acme

[anothy@cosym.net]

thanks to the Edit functions now being in Acme, there are three
things i find to be advantages in sam:
	sam -r <host>
very nice over connections with limited bandwidth. the entire file
needn't travel over the line, just whatever part you're looking at
currently. works great in plan9→unix (my method for editing files
on a solaris box i manage while at home, over my 56K modem) and in
unix→unix modes. i don't believe win32 can be on either end of
this, which is disapointing. a co-manage this solaris box with a
windows user, and i'd love for him to be able to call sam, so i
could stop getting all these stupid cr's in my files.
	text mode with sam -d
acme has no command line mode (that concept doesn't really make
much sense). in cases like editing files before vga is up on plan
9 or telnet'd into a remote box, sam -d is great. it's also an
improvement (IMHO) over ed or sed for scripts, in that it's less
tied to the idea of a line, and can better operate on arbitrary
character ranges.
	cross platform
sam's available on plan 9, win32, and posix+X. acme's only
available in plan 9 and inferno. as noted earlier, inferno runs
on most popular unixes and win32, and one could easialy set up
inferno for easy access to the underlying files. then you could
use acme most anywhere. you might think it's a bit much work for
an editor, but it's doable. it's a judgement call.

other than that, i think acme is a much superior editor, even
without all the other benefits it gives. i find it to be a much
cleaner interface for multiple files, and the chording is a huge
win (IMHO; it's not for everyone). chording's probably what i
miss most in sam. that also makes acme more consistant with rio,
a win for plan 9 users. for one-off file editing, i've finally
moved from 'sam file' to 'acme file' - my big complaint there
being that acme still pops up the empty second column, wasting
screen space.


wily is a good effort, but is far inferior. i don't like using it.
-α.