On Mon, May 25, 2026 at 01:41:20PM -0400, Howard Gibson via Talk wrote:
I learned vi when I took UNIX administration training, and I am now addicted to it. If I need to do gross copying and pasting, I will switch to emacs-lucid. I am working on a 500KB LaTeX document here and vi is the only way to navigate it efficiently. If you are an efficient touch typist, you should learn vi. Everyone else should run away screaming. Peeing yourself is optional.
Yeah I definitely prefer using vi (well vim) for my editing, and would never consider it something to recommend learning. Sure it is extremely powerful and extremely efficient. It is also incredibly weird.
I have GNU/Linux install instructions on my website and I have been recommending nano as a user-friendly command line text editor. This is the text editor from pine/alpine, configured to not automatically wrap text. Once you are in it, there is a menu across the bottom of the screen telling you what to do.
Well pico is the editor from pine. nano is the free GNU clone of pico. -- Len Sorensen