Re: SEUL: Text editors.

[Donovan Rebbechi <elflord@pegasus.rutgers.edu>]

On Mon, 16 Feb 1998, Kevin Forge wrote:

> Pleas note that at no time do I explain to the user how edit.com
> works.  I never tell him how to use the menu or how to save a file

you wouldn't have had to explain with pico either. You can use _precisely
the same steps in pico/ee/jed_ (barring that they may not no what ^X
means. Then again, you could have something explaining this, like jed 
does) just a matter of that this person used in edit.com. Nice story! but
I don't see why it has proved anything.

> or even how to exit the program.  

Yes, but if it tells you how to exit on the top of the screen (duh!) well,
how hard can it be ?? If it tells you how to do _EVERYTHING_ on top of the
screen, how hard is it really ? And for those that have _never_ or rarely
used a windows computer, you can't assume that they know how to use
windows.  

> There are people writing text editors for Linux all the time, most
> of them introduce an entirely new interface shared by noting else.
> For once it would be nice to do an editor that was decidedly NOT 
> original.

Jed: the keybindings can be assigned in a config file (I believe)
ee and pico: keybindings already exist.

> PS : There are other such incidents involving device drivers,
>    win.ini, system.ini moved files and even deleted config.sys.

And I could name equally many incidents where some-one totally clueless
has succesfully used pico. If the tools that already exist are sufficient,
then why not use them ? I have yet to see even the  most clueless newbies
complain about pico being "hard to use". ee is essentially the same as
pico. Jed is just as easy to use if you ship a nice configuration (display
the commands on top of the screen like pico.) 


-- Donovan