From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: anothy@cosym.net To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] sam vs acme MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Message-Id: <20010625002848.2151519A05@mail.cse.psu.edu> Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2001 20:28:37 -0400 Topicbox-Message-UUID: bf162b46-eac9-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 thanks to the Edit functions now being in Acme, there are three things i find to be advantages in sam: sam -r 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.