What is your favorite text editor?

The choice of "which is default" is up to the user, by setting EDITOR in their shell init scripts.

Ah-ha! Bloody difficult changing any sort of config file that might give you the editor of your choice, if you can't use the editor that you did not choose.

Why is ee any easier than vi? Simply because one of the e's stands for "easy"?

No, not 'cos it stands for easy. But because it has got the instructions at the top of the screen by default and has simple and explanatory pop up menus.

If I already have vi command memory muscled, ee is not easy to me.

Yes! New users do not have it 'memory muscled' <rhetorical>do they?</rhetorical> Nor do I (and I am not new).



Escape - Bang - Whoosh - Flip ... oh, sorry. How do you use vi again?
 
Ee, and all the wysiwyg editors, you don't need tutorials. Really, for the simple task of typing stuff in, you should not need a tutorial. Word processors of any worth, you can just pick them up by usage.

Vi and emacs! Why disappear into a parallel universe in order to modify a few config files.
 
Ee, and all the wysiwyg editors, you don't need tutorials.
Of course you have and use them, you have them continuously in front of your eyes. I find it disturbing.

On the meantime emacs use X11 and you have menus, this is also like a tutorial.

For the limited functionality of ee, emacs and vi are as easy to use as ee.
 
hruodr Yes, I do understand that those who love vi (and emacs) are happy with them.

But the same people must realise both that
* those who do not like vi are not happy
and
* those who want to try Freebsd and have never used vi get stuck.
 
Yes, I do understand that those who love vi (and emacs) are happy with them.
It has nothing to do with liking them or not.

I do see that ee is good for beginners. But if someone does not like to get struck on any unix like system,
better he learns a little to deal with vi and ed. That is all what I say. They are standards, and standards
are convenient even if they are not perfect.
 
Possibly I should submit this howto: Get out of vi when you are stuck!

<Alt> <F2>

login: root <Enter>

password: whatever <Enter>

$ pkill vi <Enter>

<Alt> <F1>
 
… you are advocating for a choice in the default editor for all users,

To avoid confusion

I'd like the installer to ask the person installing whether the installed system should default to:
  • ee (easy editor); or
  • vi.
… "the other 50% that preferred the current default XYZ should be forced to do extra work now instead of me".

Visualise one hundred percent of one person performing an installation on a single computer.
 
Why disappear into a parallel universe in order to modify a few config files.
That is what Microsoft has been telling sysadmins for years. Just click some buttons instead ;)

ee is no problem. Though you are still seen as a "technical wizard" because it can be used via a command line. One day people will push to have a heavy GUI system on a server just because "why use a command line to modify a few config files". FreeBSD has to draw a line somewhere or it will become a mess.

Plus you can pick up vi in a couple of afternoons. It is fairly limited compared to Vim so its difficulty isn't endless. If people can go through the trouble of learning ZFS, Bhyve, ports, WM config and countless other things, a text editor isn't impossible.

ed or ex is where I draw my line (for interactive use). I can't seem to find a good workflow with them!
 
In a lot of cases, those who get stuck using vi or need a graphical editor and other things might not be good candidates to be a FreeBSD user. See my sig below.
 
How many.

I'm aware of only two three in base:

See my sig below.

I'm a professional.

I prefer ee to vi.

those who get stuck using vi or need a graphical editor and other things might not be good candidates to be a FreeBSD user.

Things:

1632588052077.png


Hint: that's from the FreeBSD Foundation.
 
Well. Color me entirely entertained by the diversion into the topic of "default editor," yet color me also slightly confused. I can't recall ever being automatically placed into any editor, and normally edit configuration files using this syntax: [editor-name-of-my-choice] [config-file-name-of-my-choice].

I suppose my bewilderment might come about, at least partly, because I normally use packages instead of ports, and, when I do use ports, I normally compile them with make install clean, which, if I remember right, never places me automatically into any editor. (It's always possible my memory is faulty since I wouldn't really care if it did.)

Also IIRR, when I initially started using AIX about thirty years ago, I had to use either vi or ed-- no other editor program was available on the system-- so I chose vi. Actually it was more or less mandatory for the programming staff to learn vi anyway, but I suppose that too is beside the point. Nowadays I use vi because ( a.) I've already learned it, and ( b.) once having learned it, I've always preferred it, but, assuming that I hadn't already learned it, I might prefer to use ee (AKA edit).

However, I mean to say, if I didn't want to use vi, and, if something was automatically causing the system to force vi on me, on first boot after the install, I would just execute the command: edit [config-file-that-makes-me-use-vi] and change my editor preference, to the editor of my choice, with the editor of my choice.
 
Just for fun:

Some time ago I created a vi based geocache https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC911D4. It is located near Nuremberg in Germany. The story is about someone who has lost his backups. The admin has found the backups and has hidden them. He gave the poor guy the key strokes to print the coordinates. Unfortunately the story is available only in German language.

The commands I could use are limited by a sandbox in the internet where anybody can try out vi commands. There are more options than just press all the keys to solve the mystery. Finally the coordinates are printed as 'x' patterns turned by 90 degree. And yes, I made it more complex than necessary ;-).
 
There is some joke or meme, that I've seen about ssh-ing into a Debian install, which has nano as its default editor, and then trying to figure out how to exit it. I think ee is similar to nano, but I'm not sure of that. I used to use pico, when I first started using Linux and used pine for mail. Then, in my first IT job, my boss asked me to fix a file on the AIX machine. I had to go back to him and say, It doesn't have pico. He said, You don't know vi? Never mind, I'll do it, I learned vi's basics that night.
 
There is some joke or meme, that I've seen about ssh-ing into a Debian install, which has nano as its default editor, and then trying to figure out how to exit it. I think ee is similar to nano, but I'm not sure of that. I used to use pico, when I first started using Linux and used pine for mail. Then, in my first IT job, my boss asked me to fix a file on the AIX machine. I had to go back to him and say, It doesn't have pico. He said, You don't know vi? Never mind, I'll do it, I learned vi's basics that night.
I've learned vi in the same way. And even today, vi and ksh on aix still pretty much the same, because they keep sane defaults (one of the reasons you can safely update aix from a 4.0 install directly to the last supported version on that machine without issues).
 
In my career I can count the number of times I've used ee to edit a file on less than a single finger. Never used it, never missed it.
Why is ee any easier than vi?
Once you enter the file you want to create or access all the commands are listed at the top of the ee terminal window that's brought up.

When you're done hit Esc. It will ask if you want to leave without saving, save and exit.
 
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