Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2007 22:42:15 -0500
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>,
   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>

Oh, a couple more things: that list of what emacs can do is not a
complete list...there's more...and a number of emacs versions I've
used have a built-in tutorial to help you learn to use it.

-- Mike B.

At 1/18/2007 10:36 PM, Mike B. wrote:
>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.
>--