8 Aug
2011
8 Aug
'11
11:42 p.m.
----- Original Message -----
About 12 years ago, I've been someone who did a
hardware-reset,
in order to quit vi (text-editor).
That tool didn't give a hint how to use, nor how to quit it.
Changing that would have been simple and had had no influence on
functionality.
I think this applies to many applications:
You can do 2/ but still support a new user getting there,
without too much hassle.
are you sure? did you write some program?
vi is weird, but once you /know/ it, it's
easy to use. My very first time with it was
going to be like yours but:
1 - I was a computer science student so I
had, I don't know how to call that, the
correct "state of mind" (or maybe I was young
and full of arrogance and that won't be that
little piece of stuff that's gonna impress me)
2 - a guy near me told me about "ESC :q" and
saved my life.
You say it's easy to make vi "user friendly",
can you elaborate?
I am just curious, don't be offended. I wrote
several programs over the last 15 years or so,
many involve some user interaction, some are
in the audio world (a simple daw, a simple
notation program), and I try to think on the
best approach to:
1 - make the program useful
2 - write it in such a way that it's easy to change
things if the design is bad/unusable/not well thought.
And, based on their popularity, I miserably fail
in 1 and when I need to change things in there I
very often fail at 2 (but that's something no one
but me can fix).
So let's take this vi (which is one of the most usable
program out there, I use it all day long and I enjoy it)
and how would you make it "easier"?
And really, I insist, I don't mean to offend you.
I am sincerely curious, to learn and improve my skills.
Regards,
Cédric.
(by the way, since vi comes after ed, as some kind of
improvement of the beast, by analogy I guess a better vi would
nowadays be called "eclipse" or something equivalent...)
(and that will be it for OT-ness, sorry)