War of editors

There exists a tradition dating from the beginning of the Années 1970 (and thus as of the beginnings of work running on screen) at the programmers, which consists in defending its favorite text editor with an enthusiasm which plank religious fanaticism. Many a exchanges of flame was held between groups which insulted the others while supporting that the text editor of their choice was the perfect tool for the edition.

Emacs against VI

The wars of editors usually burst between the unconditional ones of Emacs and those of VI, the two most popular text editors on the systems UNIX. Many users and UNIX programmers use one of this two software. Several are familiar of both, in any case, sufficiently to take part in the debate and to think that they are well placed to be able to say which is “the best”.

It frequently happens that at one time of the discussion, somebody advances that ED is the standard text editor .

The church of Emacs was formed by the users of Emacs to celebrate Emacs and discourage the use of VI. It has its clean Newsgroup, news:alt.religion.emacs. Richard Stallman declared itself with humor, Saint IGNUcius , a saint of the church of Emacs.

On their side, in love ones with VI created the Culte of VI , that certain users of Emacs call clearly “a poor wretch attempt for singer their Masters”.

Pled advantages of Emacs

Emacs has a command set available good larger than any editor based on VI.
the language of script of Emacs is an alternative of LISP and many Plugin S is available like the Client of email and Lecteur of news Gnus.
Emacs includes VI, in the form of the viper-mode. (VI is not Vim. Emacs does not include not Vim.)
Emacs does not require to and from between the modes “orders” and “insertion”.
GNU EMACS can carry out operations on the dates, with for example the Maya Calendrier or discordien, which the editors based on VI cannot do.
For the neophyte, operation is natural: each pressure of a key of the keyboard posts the character corresponding to the screen.

Pled advantages of the editors based on VI

the orders of VI seldom require the use of the keys of modification, like Ctrl or Alt. Certain users find that reduces the Troubles musculosquelettic (like the Syndrome of the carpel tunnel).
VI is lighter and more rapid that Emacs.
the presence of VI is guaranteed by the standards POSIX.
Vim, a popular editor based on VI is scriptable in current languages such as Perl, Python and Ruby.
VI functions better with the passive final . Although it is not as important as before, that can be essential, for example when the failures of the system reached a point where the graphic Environnement cannot start and which one lays out of an environment comforts very limited.
the combinations of keys of Emacs enter in conflict with certain implementations of telnet.
the use of the advanced functionalities requires generally less effort of configuration in VI than in emacs.

Humorous expressions

the use of VI is not a sin, but a penitence.
Emacs is a very good operating system to which it misses only one good text editor.
Vim is an editor; he does not seek to include " all except the sink of the cuisine" but you can clean yours with Vim.
"VI VI VI, the figure of the animal! " say the frightened emacsiens.
Emacs, it is Esc-Méta-Alt-Control-Shift. (one said also Eight Megabytes And Continuous Swapping of time when this size memory was regarded as high).
Emacs Makes has Computer Slow fox trot (" Emacs slows down the ordinateur" , in the form of recursive Acronym)
Emacs: Emmerdemment in systematic matter .

Editors for mainframes

The wars of editors did not save the Mainframe S, and it is even on the latter that they started. So in the world of the full-screen a consensus of presentation was quickly adopted driving with editors cousins like EDGAR ( EDiting Graphically And Recursively , the pioneer), XEDIT ( Xavier' S EDITor , under VM/CMS) and the editor of ISPF (under MVS/TSO), a battle made rage during ten years concerning orders UP and DOWN on each editor: Was UP to make assemble the pointer in the text, or on the contrary to make assemble the text? A remark ends up privileging one from the points of view: since in all the editors, SIGNAL placed at the beginning of the text and BOTTOM with the end, was it more logical than UP brings closer to SIGNAL or BOTTOM? The answer consequently became obvious and all the editors of IBM mainframes aligned themselves then on this choice.

The editors for mainframes were conceptually very different from the interactive editors, because there was no question in the first context of requesting the central processing unit with each key in a hurry. It was necessary to be satisfied with the local possibilities of interaction - rather rich however - control unit associated with the screen. For this reason, it was as difficult to pass from VI to XEDIT as of XEDIT to VI , which created a new war of editors between completely interactive editors mainframes and editors. Clones of XEDIT were created for the interactive context, for example GEDIT . It was on the other hand structurally impossible to carry VI on mainframe, except programming it in the language of the control unit itself: the tools to do it were not available, and the memory of these control units in any event too small to carry all VI there, a fortiori EMACS.

Note : an editor named xedit belongs to the samples delivered with X-Window. He does not have a relationship with XEDIT .

Reason of the wars of editors

A joke says that the wars of editors are comparable with the wars of religion, but in more impassioned . Why this passion? Because all that relates to the interaction of a user with his keyboard raises of behaviors that it ends up programming way almost reflex, without the conscious one between each time in detail of what is made. When one changes of editor (just as when one passes from a keyboard AZERTY to a QWERTY, or the reverse or that one must use the short cuts keyboard Windows <-> Macintosh), the conscious one is permanently disturbed to treat the errors made because of these acquired gestures, and thus interferes in an irritating way with work of writing itself. By association of ideas, irritation then is often allotted to the editor used and not to the difference of editor, more abstract concept.

See too

Troll

External bond

Jokes on Emacs and VI

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