From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!C70:editor-people Newsgroups: fa.editor-p Title: Re: Small Computer Editors/Insert mode Article-I.D.: ucb.1468 Posted: Sat Jul 3 01:30:35 1982 Received: Sun Jul 4 00:40:35 1982 >From POURNE@MIT-MC Sat Jul 3 01:26:12 1982 Write has both INSERT character mode toggled by ^F, and Open Whitespace toggled by ^G. It will also go into "open whitespace" each time you reach the end of a line of already entered text--ie you are typing over old until you come to the end of the line, at whch point a NEWLINE of whitespace is generated. I find this very natural to use; and since for me the primary quality of an editor is that it be utterly transparent, I like this mode. I have experimented with the Emacs "normally in insert" mode, and I don't much care for it, expecially since you have to rejustify the paragraph at the end of the edit ops. My college room mate is down for a visit, and his wife is attending a school on how to use a VAX text editor. I admit I know little about a VAX. However, the sales lady for the vAx editor they are training Judy (my former reoom mate's wife) on was over for a drink after classes today, and although she was very defensive about their editor, she was unable to tell me any feature that their editor has that my 8085 WRITE does not have; except, of course, some of the VERY rapid disk ops to hard diwsks; but then Iwasn't really showing her my 8085, I was showing her WRITE on Ezekial, who is a 55K 2mH z-80 vintage 1975, and whose disk ops are VERY slow. I am still waiting to see a "big machine" editor that does more for a creative writer than the editors available on the 8085 can do. I suppose I may as well cease these comments; I don't really care whether I win converts or not. But I am amazed at how much better many MICRO editors are than those available to BIG machines. (Walt Bilofsky tells me he has noticed the same things.)