[Tutor] What has Editor X got that PyWin32 hasn't?

[Lie Ryan]

> Message: 6
> Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2008 21:31:51 +0100
> From: "Alan Gauld" <alan.gauld at btinternet.com>
> Subject: Re: [Tutor] What has Editor X got that PyWin32 hasn't?
> To: tutor at python.org
> Message-ID: <g84p3n$5n8$1 at ger.gmane.org>
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>         reply-type=original
> 
> 
> "Lie Ryan" <lie.1296 at gmail.com> wrote
> 
> > I've seen vi(m) being praised a lot, well, personally the thing
> that 
> > I
> > hate the most about vim is its directional button (khjl) which is
> > unnatural
> 
> But very logical and easy to remember when you recall
> that ^H was backspace (go left), and ^j was linefeed
> (go down)  and the typists home position has the right hand
> on ,j,k,l, (and if you use your imagination K looks a bit like
> an up arrow and L like a right facing symbol - but personally
> I think that's coincidental!) and shifting one position left is
> an easy reach. (BTW A lot of early terminal games, especially
> on Unix use the hjkl format. And so, of course does the
> bash shell and more (and maybe less?) )

No offense (to you and to other vi(m) fans), but that argument is
forcing itself way too much[1], humans doesn't think in such terms --
not in their subconsciousness -- humans think visually when navigating
(up is located somewhere higher than down)[2].

[1] (to note: it isn't that I don't remember the buttons, but I found
myself subconsciously pressing j when I want to go up and k when I want
to go down nearly all the time)

[2] That's why no TV remote put their buttons in this arrangements:
    right
down up left

Though I do admit that plane pilots do have their own queerness on
choosing the direction their plane goes when they move their joystick,
somehow it does feels more natural.

> > touchpad and keyboard 2) the keyboard is smaller, 3) many of the 
> > hotkeys
> > require pressing Esc first to get out from editing/inserting mode, 
> > which
> > is just as inconvenient as reaching the Ctrl. And for vi(m), after 
> > going
> > to command/shortcut mode and pressing the shortcut, then most of the
> > time you have to go back to editing mode by pressing i/a/etc, that 
> > is
> > much worse than the Ctrl craziness.
> 
> Remember that the default mode in vi is "editing mode" with is 
> actually

OK, wrong terminology, I'm not too much fan of vi(m) myself, pardon for
that. 

> where you type commands. The mode you call editing mode is
> actually insert mode and only applies for the duration of a command.
> Thus it is logical, from command mode, to enter a command, enter trext
> and then hit ESC to escape from insert mode back to the native
> editing/command mode. You have to get used to the idea that inserting
> text is not the default activity, navigating and changing text is - 
> which is

To me, as a programmer, navigating, inserting, deleting, and editing are
four basic operation when editing a text, I can't stand inserting and
deleting (or any one of them) being called second to the others. Why do
they think that programmers insert texts less often than changing text?
I'm not sure, probably that's their workflow.

> what most programmers do most of the time. So a command in
> vim consists of:
> 
> <cmd key>[<type text to insert/change>[<escape>]]

which is a waste of movement compared to modern text editor. Compared to
just clicking then typing, pressing command then typing then escape is
redundant. For those that used vim because you don't want your hand to
be getting back and forth from the keyboard to mouse when typing, you
should change to a laptop, in which the distance between the touchpad
and keyboard is really close (you could, sort of, say that the keyboard
and the touchpad is a singular device). 

I could even argue that moving the hand from the home position to
touchpad is shorter than moving the hand from home position to Esc key,
which you have to do many times in vim. And as an addition, in a modern
text editor, you could use shift+directional[1] to select text very
quickly, you can't do that in the almighty vim, you must instead type
"y(ank)-an_obscure_direction_that_is_slow_to_work_with_because_you_have_to_carefully_count_first_how_many_characters_or_words_or_lines_you_want_to_yank_,_what_makes_it_worse_is_you_cannot_realize_counting_mistake_until_you_putted_the_text_,_also_if_you_make_a_mistake_you_have_to_do_it_from_beginning_instead_of_continuing_where_you_left_off_before-ESCAPE(From_this_mess)"

[1] directional isn't only up, down, left, and right, but also home,
end, page up, page down, and ctrl+directional, most people never fully
utilize the extended directionals and instead uses the mouse (or in case
of vim users, keyboards) more than is really necessary (instead of
balancing between keyboard and mouse usage).

> The good news about vim (as opposed to vi) 

The only good news about vim is it's the only command-line text editor
in my OS that I know.

> is that you don't
> need to do that nearly as often since it recognises the arrow
> keys and you can do basic deletion etc while in insert mode.

I know I can use the arrow key, but that doesn't seems to be the
preferred choice of vim-ers when they're in editing mode (now with
correct terminology)

> But the whole point of vi/vim is that you are required to change your
> way of thinking about text editing. It is a different approach in the
> same way that Lisp or Prolog  or SQL are very different approaches
> to programming from Python. 

Although I never used Prolog and only knows the basic syntax for Lisp
(when I had the time I will surely approach them), I never thought SQL
as a programming language, I thought it deserve a classification of its
own kind, just like HTML (to me HTML/XML is Data Descriptor Language,
and SQL is ).

> There is no escaping the fact that
> vi/vim are very powerful 

I agree it is very powerful, at its time, when computers are
keyboard-only and terminal-only. But now, most of its power is largely
redundant and is pale compared to modern text-editor that do acknowledge
mouse as a primary input device.

> but only after you invest heavily in learning
> their ethos. Until you do they will drive you nuts! But if you use
> them regularly that only last a week or so... :-)

> HTH,
> 
> Alan G