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I'm so happy to see that this article is old. There is no reason to continue the ridiculous editor wars. emacs and vi have really held back innovation imho with

by rsl7 13y ago

I'm so happy to see that this article is old. There is no reason to continue the ridiculous editor wars. emacs and vi have really held back innovation imho with their slavish devotion to the tty paradigm. this problem is that they are good enough so that innovation has slowed. Feels like we're stuck in the 70s but with web browsers.

falcolas 13y ago
You had me until you started talking about holding back innovation. There may be room for innovation in the text editing market, but I don't see vim and emacs holding anything back just by being good text editors.
fusiongyro 13y ago
M-x variable-pitch-mode
greggman 13y ago
I completely agree with you. I believe there are tons of things that could be done better, many I'm sure I'm not creative enough to imagine, if the editor wasn't tied to tty. Here's one idea which I'm sure sucks but....I wish a code editor could show images inline where appropriate. I'd personally like to see HTML style comments inline, where by default the comments are shown styled and you can press some hot key to edit them as html, and maybe by default they edit in wysiwyg mode. I know some programmers will complain they won't then be able to read the comments in their editor of choice but that's exactly the point. tty only = stuck in the 70s. How is that any different than if HTML never supported colors, fonts, images, svg, etc? Sure, it's code but some code is better explained through diagrams. I shouldn't have to go find a manual to see the diagram, it should be in the code. And no, text based digrams with +----+ etc are not a full substitue for real images. Heck, I'm sure some of you would like to see MathML displayed in it's rendered form inline in a description of some math function instead of only it's source form.
- greggman 13y ago
  I'm disappointed you downvoters are so stuck in your ways that you can't imagine it's possible things could ever be improved by getting out of text mode.
- greggman 13y ago
  And now we see IntellJ using graphics to show you inline references to icons and colors as just one example of what graduating to a graphics can provide. Yep, Text only forever!! :-(

by rsl7 13y ago

falcolas 13y ago

You had me until you started talking about holding back innovation. There may be room for innovation in the text editing market, but I don't see vim and emacs holding anything back just by being good text editors.

fusiongyro 13y ago

M-x variable-pitch-mode

greggman 13y ago

I completely agree with you. I believe there are tons of things that could be done better, many I'm sure I'm not creative enough to imagine, if the editor wasn't tied to tty. Here's one idea which I'm sure sucks but....I wish a code editor could show images inline where appropriate. I'd personally like to see HTML style comments inline, where by default the comments are shown styled and you can press some hot key to edit them as html, and maybe by default they edit in wysiwyg mode. I know some programmers will complain they won't then be able to read the comments in their editor of choice but that's exactly the point. tty only = stuck in the 70s. How is that any different than if HTML never supported colors, fonts, images, svg, etc? Sure, it's code but some code is better explained through diagrams. I shouldn't have to go find a manual to see the diagram, it should be in the code. And no, text based digrams with +----+ etc are not a full substitue for real images. Heck, I'm sure some of you would like to see MathML displayed in it's rendered form inline in a description of some math function instead of only it's source form.

greggman 13y ago
I'm disappointed you downvoters are so stuck in your ways that you can't imagine it's possible things could ever be improved by getting out of text mode.
greggman 13y ago
And now we see IntellJ using graphics to show you inline references to icons and colors as just one example of what graduating to a graphics can provide. Yep, Text only forever!! :-(