2004-08-05T14:58:47 mmd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx: > On 16:28 Thu 05 Aug , Stewart V. Wright wrote: > > Otherwise use a real editor! :-P > > *Ducking for cover before the editor wars being* > > I like emacs just fine, but the startup time is just long > enough to bug me. For lightweight editing tasks--with the emacs > key-bindings--jed is tough to beat. I've looked long and hard at jed, and I think it's definitely on the short list of Real Editors. Its embedded language isn't lisp or a dialect of it, it's s-lang. s-lang isn't lispy, so for the kinds of hairy programming-in-the-large where you end up doing layer upon layer of defining new languages to make it easier to solve your problem, s-lang doesn't compete. But for an editor extension/implementation language it appears to be powerful enough, at least for the more basic tasks, and jed has taken it further than any other editor I know of other than GNU Emacs and it's evil twin xemacs. And it's got the footprint and launch speed you expect from the smaller, non-extensible editors. It's got a lot of punch for the resources it requires. I don't think Jed will be competing in some of the hardest domains where emacs excels --- I'd be surprised if jed could read a DTD to automatically implement an SGML/XML mode tuned to that DTD --- but for a $EDITOR to call out of mutt it seems reasonable to me. My own favourite is jove, which I'll be the first to admit is no where near as powerful as jed. Jove has no extension language at all. My fingers mastered it to the point where I don't have to think about it any more, I started with it in 1983. I've not found a use for jed. I do keep a handful of editors around, though. Always reach for jove first for normal editing. If I want to edit arbitrary binary data, or horrifically big files, I turn to elle. And if I need to run gdb (it's been some years...) I'd get GNU emacs. I no longer include it in my normal builds, though. Haven't yet ported it to my distro, don't know that I will. -Bennett
Attachment:
pgpjr0kwEeqRi.pgp
Description: PGP signature