Re: Politics and anoouncing

[R G Mayhue <rgmayhue@serenesoftware.com>]

On Thu, 05 Aug 1999, you wrote:
>
> To me this is more than a debate about an editor. It's about standards.
> There is a set of utilies that are standard across all UNIX variants, and
> /bin/vi is one of them. There are a lot of things I think we need to
> attack and get rid of, but standards and compatiblity are not among them.
>

I thought about this before when I brought up the *Newbie Idea* post
a while back. And I agree with Donovan, vi should never be taken out of
any distribution of Linux because it *is* a standard editor. I agree
that it should also not be named something its not (ie: vi -> pico).
Most newbies to Linux are (more then likely) moving to Linux from
windows or DOS. Why not provide the user with a symlink to pico (or I
found joe to be an easy to use editor) by typing "edit" (ie: edit ->
pico),  like MS-DOS EDIT. Or use "editor" if the MS part bothers
anyone. 

This idea could be used to solve many such problems by giving
the new user familiar DOS commands to use, and get the Linux equivalent.
This could be implemented as a rpm package that the user chooses at
install time, (ei: Recomended for anyone new to Linux) to help guide
them. When they use any of the symlinked commands, a short reminder
could be displayed on the command line informing them of the name of
the real editor they are about to use and also giving them a choise
to open its documentation first. It could also explain that by later
typing the real editors name, it will be faster then using the symlink.

> I also think this move is risky politically -- it will
earn us a lot of > vocal detractors ( whom I just might join ... ) 
>

I beleive Donovan is right here. After all the imput I got with the
newbie idea post, and also more experience with Linux itself, I have
come to beleive a little differantly then I had before (you knew that
would happen, didn't you). Linux is Linux, and there's some things you
just don't want (and shouldn't) to change. I would be a great shame!

Enough from me(-:
--

R.G. Mayhue
rgmayhue@serenesoftware.com

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