I'd like to respond to this, even though I think 'no change' is the best
policy at the moment.

On Thu, Jul 16, 2015 at 12:41:18AM +0200, Didier Kryn wrote:

> Le 15/07/2015 18:02, Klaus Ethgen a écrit :
> >Even though mc is something good for beginners but debian or devuan is
> >not focusing on beginners and even devuan is focusing on "veteran unix
> >admins" so vi(m) would be the only proper choice.:-D
>     I remember 30 years ago, there was an admin in my lab advocating for vi.
> I tried to find a manual and couldn't find one. Several time I watched the
> guy editing some files and was impressed by how painfull it was to him to
> change a single character in a text. I have been using emacs and emacs-like

Change a single letter:
<navigate to letter>
r<new letter>
:x<Enter>

Sorry, I don't see how that's painful unless you're talking about someone
who either didn't know the software or had a hard time finding the letter.

Navigate to a location by line number:
:<number>
Search for a word or phrase:
/<regex>
...Those seem pretty simple, too.

Replace occurences of a regex with an expression on the current line:
:s/<regex>/<exp>/g
Through the whole file:
:%s/<regex>/<expr>/g
>From the current line to the end of the file:
:.,$s/<regex>/expr>/g
>From the start of the file to the current line:
:1,.s/<regex>/expr>/g

Run a command:
:!command
Replace the current line with the output of a command that reads the
current file:
:.!command %

> editors for 33 years I think. Of course I don't ask to have emacs installed
> by default (it is huge), nor even a small emacs clone, such as mg. If
> there's always vim-tiny, why are people asking to remove nano? If the gurus
> use vim and dislike nano, since they are gurus, they can change the default
> themselves and leave the ordinary people with a limited but usable editor.

For one thing, you almost certainly will get dumped into the default
editor during the install, and using nano is rather painful (especially
if you use vi).

Honestly, the first time I encountered nano, I thought "How on earth do
you use this?"
Sure, it has the cheat sheet right at the bottom of the screen, but even
then a *new* user will be lost by the terminology they use ("Write out"?
"Where is"? What does "cur pos" mean? How do you select text? How do you
paste text?).

That said, the first time I encountered vi I was even more baffled;
sure, I read a description of how to use hjkl, i, and :wq/:q!, but even
if you commit that to memory, press one wrong key and you're done.
(Speaking of which, it would be really nice if we could at least enable
multiple undo by default...)
And I really don't think that there's a way to make vi user-friendly.
But pick up any book on learning *nix, and within a few chapters you'll
find a section on vi. And the fact that it's a relative of sed is a point
that makes it easier to pick up.

But I have never managed to figure out how to use emacs, and even the way
the keybindings are written is a bit of a WTF. (Whose idea was it to
represent the modifier keys by the first letter of their *nix name?)

If I were to pick a default editor with the intent of making an easy-to-use
system, my first pick would be joe/jupp; while it doesn't have the cheat
sheet at the bottom of the screen, it tells you how to get help, and that
help is more useful than nano's.
As a bonus for those who prefer RSI, it comes with a 'jmacs' mode that
imitates emacs (which, of course, I have not tested). There's also
jpico, which is a clone of the 'pico' editor that nano is a clone of.

Thanks,
Isaac Dunham