[OT] Text Editor vs IDE aka ctrl-s froze VI

[Levi Pearson]

On Oct 14, 2005, at 10:19 AM, Shane Hathaway wrote:
>
> Until you accidentally press a random key combination and you have  
> no idea why the editor suddenly turned into a news reader.  Good  
> luck getting back to your precious file.  It happened to me  
> once. :-)  Vi is just as bad, though, IMHO.

Well, there is a bit of a learning curve.  Once you understand  
buffers, you can switch back to whatever you were doing before  
easily.  If you're talking newbie-friendly text editors, then yes,  
both emacs and vi can get you in trouble with random keypresses, and  
something simpler might be better.  Said newbie is likely to need to  
learn one or the other, at least, in the future.

vi won't turn into a newsreader, but it may delete half your document  
if you start typing without changing to insert mode first. :)

I was fond of jed as a newbie.  It was similar enough to emacs that I  
could use the same basic keys, but it loaded quickly and didn't have  
any bizarre reactions to mistakes, like loading newsreaders.

         --Levi