Re: [Groff] Hi, some newbie questions.

[Mike Parson]

On Mon, Jan 17, 2005 at 10:24:12AM -0800, John Doe wrote:
> Well, yes, I have a name, but prefer to use this backup Yahoo! mail
> account that keeps spam away from my real email account.
>
> Perhaps I should spend an afternoon to code an AI script to filter
> spam out of my mailbox... :-P

procmail and spamassassin do a fine job. =)
But that's a discussion for another list.

> Anyhow, I think it's unfair to recommend something like vim to
> a newbie. As far as vim's keymaps are concerned - perhaps I'll
> bother and create one. But why bother? As you said, SciTE is a
> fine editor. But if I really had to work in console, I'd still use
> something like joe or nano. Preferably joe - it is also a fine
> editor. Why not recommend it and make a newbie's day?

We will recommend what we know and are comfortable with.  Editors of
choice under *nix are a religious thing that go back farther than SysV
vs BSD, long before there was even a thought of Linux, maybe before
Linus himself? ;)

If one recommends an editor to someone, then said person might come
back and ask for help with some feature of it.  Most of us here can
probably help out with some obscure feature of (n)vi, vim, or (X)emacs,
but probably would tell you to just go read the man or info pages for
joe, jed, or anything else that can be found on your full install of
your favorite Linux distribution.

Besides, anyone looking for the feature set of nano (or lack there of)
probably doesn't need to be messing with groff. =)

I hate to come off sounding elitest, not my intention, but others did
offer sincere help and offer good suggestions.

Back more on the topic of wishful thinking for GUI-ish groff editors:

I'd like to see something along the lines of the old WordPerfect
'display codes' mode.  Split screen (80/20?), bottom few lines of
the editor show what you're editing with the embeded codes that
chanage what's going on, the main editing window would show you a
pseudo-formatted version, maybe what the text would look like when sent
through -Tascii.

And, of course, vi keybindings in the editor =)

-- 
Michael Parson
address@hidden