Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2007 22:36:49 -0500
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>,
   WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
From: "Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Geeky humor...
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

At 1/18/2007 09:53 PM, Ted White wrote:

>A "powerful text editor" in what way?  Wherein does the power lie?  Why
>should anyone editing text prefer Emacs?  What are the rest of us missing?

It's powerful in the same way that TPU is on OpenVMS: it deals with
text very well and is extensible.

Emacs lets you move or delete by character, word, sentence, or
paragraph.  It lets you cut and paste the same way, or by rectangular
areas.  It uses regular expressions for searching (which beats
explicit text searches, as in anything I've ever seen from MicroSoft,
all hollow).  It lets you shift the current cursor position, and the
text it is in, to the middle of the window with one command.  It lets
you edit in multiple windows, either all showing parts of one file,
or several, or both at the same time.  It lets you insert other files
into the file you are editing.  It has multiple level undo.  When you
cut text you can append it to text you've previously cut, then paste
the whole mess somewhere else, even into another file.  It lets you
record a series of commands, and then play them back with a single
command.  It lets you transpose characters, words or lines.  It lets
you change case without retyping the text (upper, lower, or
capitalize, words or regions).  It lets you read mail, compile
programs, edit directories, start a terminal session, or play several
games.  It has an outline mode where you can suppress display of
various levels of your outline or move by topic.  It has an
abbreviation mode where you can define short words that automatically
expand into other text when you type them.  It has a bunch of
features useful to programmers as well, but most here probably
wouldn't care about those.  It's a Swiss Army knife of text editing features.

Oh, and it's available without cost on a bunch of different
OSs...including Windows in one variant or another.

For anyone who has to edit on Windows, but has problems with Emacs'
obscure command keys, check out Crimson Edit...it's not bad at all
(regular expressions, multiple windows, and FTP capability to edit
and save to another system over the net...and it understands Windows,
Mac and Unix line termination standards.  It's free
too.  http://www.crimsoneditor.com/

-- Mike B.
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