On Sun, 28 Apr 2002 16:19:16 +1000
Robert Elz <kre@munnari.OZ.AU> wrote:

>     Date:        28 Apr 2002 1:46:9 +0100
>     From:        "Iggy Drougge" <iggy@kristallpojken.org>
>     Message-ID:  <701.883T450T1064335optimus@canit.se>
> 
>   | OTOH, Nano (Which is GNU's PICO clone) is self-instructing. No
>   | modes,
> 
> Ignoring licence issues, that itself makes it useless.   I type letters
> and digits (and a few special characters).  I want my editor commands to
> be letters, and digits, and a few special characters.   Since I also
> want my text to be letters and digits, and a few special characters,
> there needs to be some way to tell whether I am typing commands or text.
>  Hence modes. I refuse to work with my finger permanently sitting on the
>  control key.

That's a poor argument. There is no need for an editor to have modes since
the widespread adoption of keyboards with arrow keys to allow easy
movement through text. Likewise there is no point in using a line editor
on a display with absolute cursor positioning, use a visual editor
instead.

Why is having modes preferable to using the ctrl keys for editor
functions? With ctrl keys you can perform an editor operation with two
simultaneous keypresses, if one uses modes one has to enter the mode,
perform the operation and possibly return to the correct mode afterwards.
Less keypresses is always a good thing, plus you have no way to tell which
mode you are in until you start pressing keys.

--Andrew

-- 
sparc sun4c stuff : http://www.lostgeneration.freeserve.co.uk/sparc
personal email    : bob at lostgeneration dot freeserve dot co dot uk