So, yeah, thanks to Timelady I checked out the xkcd comic she was talking about. Some people would say that Emacs users are too fanatical about the text editor which has anything and everything but the kitchen sink. Though I prefer Emacs over other text editors it doesn’t mean that vi wouldn’t get any attention from me in this blog.

Things I remember the most about vi:

• It is V-I. Yup. Two letters V and I. It’s not pronounced vi like the first syllable of the ‘visual’ though the name of the editor is derived from that.
• There are modes in vi. They are not the same as the modes of Emacs because the main modes of vi are insert and view. It’s either you are in the editing mode (insert) or you’re in the read only mode (view).
• It has its own keyboard shortcuts which you must remember. So far the ones I know always has the colon (”:”) so that’s one thing, I guess. Whenever I use vi I look at any available cheatsheet.
• It’s available on practically any Linux distro.

One reason why I get to use vi is that it is available on practically every Linux distro. I have yet to see a distro without vi. So that’s one thing that vi has as a strength. It is something that everyone would be able to use because it’s there. Also, it’s not too huge compared to Emacs. (I admit, Emacs could be a huge text editor!) And it has less keyboard shortcuts.

It might be something that people would prefer because it is straightforward: it’s a text editor so it easily allows you to edit text. If you want to know more about vi, I think that this starting point aptly called The Vi Lovers Home Page will give you the best links to more information, cheatsheets, etc. of vi.

Post from: New Linux User

Emacs lets me do the following:

• Organize my tasks and notes – via Planner, Remember and Org mode.
• Play music through EMMS
• Commit files to the repository via psvn
• Browse stuff on the intarwebs
• Open a terminal!
• Chat on IRC by using ERC then connecting to bitlbee.
• Listen to myself rant by talking to the Emacs Doctor.
• Play a game or two — Snake, Tetris, among other things. I could play Nethack too but I am not good at it.
• Manage my files.

There is so much more and you could check out the Emacs Wiki for that. This is but a short list but I guess I’d just like to say that Emacs is definitely one app that I really must have. And thanks to Linux I got to use it and love it as well. ♥

Post from: New Linux User