Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2007 23:33:59 -0500 (EST)
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Geeky humor...
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

Mike Bartman already said most of what I was going to.  Let me just
point out the ways in which Microsoft Word falls short.

Emacs has an incremental search.  If you're not sure of the spelling
of what you're searching for, just start typing, and it will instantly
move the cursor as you type.  For instance if you're not sure how you
spell "subpoena," and type "subpeona" instead, Emacs will take you to
the first instance of "subp."  In Word (or Eclipse), you have to type
the whole thing before it starts searching, and if your spelling isn't
exactly right, it won't find anything at all.

In Emacs, when you search, replace, or do anything else, it doesn't
plaster a huge ugly box over your text, hiding what you're doing.

When you cut a chunk of text, then cut another, then cut another, you
can then paste any or all of them anywhere.  In Word (or Eclipse) as
soon as you cut anything, it forgets all previous cuts.  The computer
may have hundreds of megs of memory, but it acts as if it didn't even
have a ten-thousandth of a meg.

The commands are always the same.  When you're entering text in the
command line, you can use the same edit commands on that text as on
the main text.

The commands are all very short, and are all on the main keyboard.
You never need the mouse, or even the function keys.  So if you're a
touch typist and have thoroughly learned the commands, you can enter
several commands each *second* -- less time than it would take just
to move your hand to the mouse, never mind do anything with it.

Emacs is available for free, for numerous platforms.  Word only runs
on Windows, and doesn't even come standard with Windows -- you have to
pay extra for it.

Emacs can edit *any* kind of file, though if it's not a text file, you
had better know the format.  I've even succesfully edited MIDI files
with it, though too much of this may make you go mad.

Its macro capability is a full programming language.  You could even
calculate digits of pi with it if you liked.  Commands in a macro can
include reading and writing different files -- handy if you want to
make the same change to thousands of files.  For instance when, by
popular request, I changed the background color on all the pages on
WSFA's website.  I think that took me less than a minute.  In Word
it would have taken me most of a weekend, and I probably would have
become fatigued and made typos on some pages.

As it's open source, decades old, and very widely used, all the bugs
have long since been found and corrected.  I think it's been more
than a decade since Emacs crashed on me -- and even then, it didn't
corrupt the file I was working on.

I installed Emacs on my PC at work, on my first day or two.  I use it
on a file before converting it into Eclipse if the file has:

* Mixed-case names before the colons
* Names ending with Jr. or Sr. before the colons
* Page numbers

since the Eclipse conversion handles these poorly.  Fixing them in
Emacs takes less than ten seconds.

I use it on a file after turning an Eclipse file into ASCII:

* To search for any non-ASCII characters that slipped in
* To search for double colons
* To search for lines ending with Dr., Mr., or Ms.
* To search for a double hyphen alone on a line

Eclipse can't do any of those things.

If a client wants an ASCII file, not in our usual 52 column, double
spaced, line numbered format, with page breaks, page numbers, headers,
and footers, but in a format suitable for loading into Word, with
nothing except the raw text, all left justified, and no "hard returns"
within paragraphs, I can turn one of our usual ASCII files as produced
by Eclipse into a file in that format in about 30 seconds.