Re: [9fans] text editor

[nigel@9fs.org]

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As rog points out, if you don't want to watch the screen, you're not
using a visual editor.

hjkl does solve the hand motion issue, but a strong reason for that
mapping was ambiguity between tty escape sequences, and vi(1)
commands. Basically it couldn't tell the difference between the
user pressing escape then A, and a cursor key generating the very
same sequence.

It tried timing out after escape waiting for another character, but
at 9600 baud, users often generated ambiguous sequences within
the timeout. It would never work.

As a result, all users learnt hjkl for their own sanity, and configured
their termcaps not to tell vi(1) about cursor sequences just in case
it was stupid enough to try to tell the difference.


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From: Alexander Viro <viro@math.psu.edu>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] text editor
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2002 06:21:24 -0400 (EDT)
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.21.0204260613271.20558-100000@weyl.math.psu.edu>



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...