On Fri, Jan 07, 2000 at 02:55:56PM -0500, Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
> I strongly disagree.  The idiocy with 'ee' is the most-expressed gripe
> about FreeBSD that I've heard.  In fact, I've seen it be a key point
> in the *rejection* of FreeBSD at one major Unix site.
> 
> 'vi' is just fine.  If you don't like vi, ed works fine, too.
> 
> We are not FreeBSD.  We are not Linux.  We do not need to screw over
> experienced Unix users or bloat the distribution for the convenience
> of people who would shortly trip and fall over plenty of other fine
> points of Unix anyway on their way up the learning curve.

Hmm.  There's this place using NetBSD, where no-one knows how to use
vi.  It's always a challenge to get a new machine up and running when
you have to guide them keystroke by keystroke on the phone when they're
editing /etc/rc.confor /etc/group or doing vipw to get the system up so
I can log on from the network.

I would be REALLY nice to have some easy editor in /usr/bin (I know
it will never be in /bin anyway ;-) so these people wouldn't be so
scared of touching NetBSD.  _I_ can live with vi until I get something
installed from pkgsrc (I use jed these days because it's smaller than
emacs and I'm too stupid to use 99.9% of the capabilities of emacs), but
there are lots of people who would benefit from a simple, "normal" editor.
These people will NEVER learn vi because they normally use notepad on
windoze.  If we don't provide them an easy-to-use editor, they just keep
telling everyone how DIFFICULT unix is.

IMHO.

One more vote for a small, easy editor.

  -jm