Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
> On 2024-11-20, Chris Ahlstrom <OFeem1987@teleworm.us> wrote:
>
>> Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote this post while blinking in Morse code:
>>
>>> On Tue, 19 Nov 2024 19:30:32 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>>
>>>> For sheer economy of keystrokes, vi(m) is hard to beat.
>>>
>>> Moving around after inserting text requires n + 1 keystrokes: 1 to exit
>>> insert mode, and n to move around. Editors which don’t have a separate
>>> insert mode can do n moves with just n keystrokes.
>>
>> With vim, you can be in insert mode and still move around with the arrow
>> keys.
>>
>> /usr/share/vim/vim91/doc/ contains about 11 megs o' text help files.
>>
>> Actually, one problem with vim is tooooo many ways to do things. :-)
>
> Every now and then I come across some nifty trick I didn't know about. One
> of my favourites is /\<foo\> - which finds the next occurrence of "foo" that
> is a complete word, i.e. it ignores "foobar".
>
I didn't know there was a special way to do this. I used simply "\ foo ", as
you said "tooooo many ways to do things".

G

On Wed, 20 Nov 2024 07:39:21 -0500, Chris Ahlstrom wrote:

> Actually, one problem with vim is tooooo many ways to do things.

I've got a fairly thick book on Vim around here someplace. I have my
little bag of tricks I've developed over the years that's a small subset
of Vim but they're well polished from use. Things I do every couple of
years like turning on line numbering requires some research.

On Wed, 20 Nov 2024 17:54:32 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> Every now and then I come across some nifty trick I didn't know about.
> One of my favourites is /\<foo\> - which finds the next occurrence of
> "foo" that is a complete word, i.e. it ignores "foobar".

The clue to that one is if you use * or # to search for a word \<foo\>
shows down on the command line.

On Wed, 20 Nov 2024 10:23:18 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> Really, GUIS for a touch typists are rather things that get in the way.

In my first brush with data entry GUIs I realized the users weren't even
looking at the screen, only the data they were entering. After a few run
throughs they had the tab ordering down pat.

On Wed, 20 Nov 2024 10:23:18 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> On the other hand, CAD is impossible without one...

CAD has a different meaning in my world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-aided_dispatch

That lead to some awkward moments when interviewing candidates who hadn't
done any research into what they were applying for.

On Wed, 20 Nov 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Wed, 20 Nov 2024 07:39:21 -0500, Chris Ahlstrom wrote:
>
>> Actually, one problem with vim is tooooo many ways to do things.
>
> I've got a fairly thick book on Vim around here someplace. I have my
> little bag of tricks I've developed over the years that's a small subset
> of Vim but they're well polished from use. Things I do every couple of
> years like turning on line numbering requires some research.
>

Interesting! Line numbering is one of those things I like to have enabled
by default. I think my most common tricks are search n' replace s///g,
working with buffers, !! for pulling in stuff from the terminal, dt to
delete to, well, too many to mention. And many have almost become
automatic. ;)

On 2024-11-19 20:30, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> On 2024-11-19, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 19/11/2024 12:31, Chris Ahlstrom wrote:
>>
>>> For me, it's vi(m) or nothing.
>
> +1 - it's available on all machines, and my fingers speak
> it well enough that if I'm trying to move down the screen
> in other editors a string of "j"s appear on the screen.
> For sheer economy of keystrokes, vi(m) is hard to beat.
> Occasionally I'll fall back to a GUI editor if I need
> to cut and paste text - mousepad works, but not well
> enough to make me want to switch.
>
>>> I used to use microEmacs, but I found regular emacs too knuckle-busting.
>
> I looked at emacs once or twice, but it lives on a different planet
> than I do.

Both vi and emacs live in a different planet than I do.

....

--
Cheers, Carlos.

On 20 Nov 2024 18:53:07 GMT, G wrote:

> I didn't know there was a special way to do this. I used simply "\ foo
> ", as you said "tooooo many ways to do things".

That works, as long as there is white space.

int foo, foobar

for (foo=0; foo<10; foo++) {
foobar *= 2
}

How many foos will it find?

On Wed, 20 Nov 2024 22:11:42 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:

> Both vi and emacs live in a different planet than I do.

vi definitely lives someplace else in the solar system than vim or gVim.

The choice was easy back when disk space was at a premium. iirc, gVim took
around 2 MB, and emacs took over 20 MB. Of course gVim didn't tell your
fortune, play go, or require keyboard maneuvers equivalent to playing B7
on a guitar.

On Wed, 20 Nov 2024 21:51:03 +0100, D wrote:

> Interesting! Line numbering is one of those things I like to have
> enabled by default. I think my most common tricks are search n' replace
> s///g, working with buffers, !! for pulling in stuff from the terminal,
> dt to delete to, well, too many to mention. And many have almost become
> automatic.

Buffers are one of the selling points for me. The Brief editor had them
back in the DOS days before Borland bought it and killed it. I never could
figure out why the Visual Studio editor was so lame in that regard. I
haven't used Studio enough lately to bother but VS Code has a very nice
Vim extension. "* to interact with the clipboard is one I use often.

Recording key sequences to a named register os handy too.

On Wed, 20 Nov 2024 17:54:32 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> Every now and then I come across some nifty trick I didn't know about.
> One of my favourites is /\<foo\> - which finds the next occurrence of
> "foo" that is a complete word, i.e. it ignores "foobar".

In regular expressions, “\b” is the common symbol denoting a word
boundary.

On Wed, 20 Nov 2024 12:52:36 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> The best 2D CAD ever is still Corel draw. Draw a square where you want
> to to be, and then type in its side values to make it exact...you can
> use the mouse OR type in values.

And in 3D, there’s Blender, which lets you type, not just numeric values,
but actual (simple) Python expressions.

On 2024-11-20, Chris Ahlstrom <OFeem1987@teleworm.us> wrote:
> Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote this post while blinking in Morse code:
>
>> On Tue, 19 Nov 2024 19:30:32 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>
>>> ... my fingers speak [vi/vim] well enough
>>> that if I'm trying to move down the screen in other editors a string of
>>> "j"s appear on the screen.
>>
>> The vi/vim apps I’ve used also support the arrow keys, like modern
>> programs.
>>
>>> For sheer economy of keystrokes, vi(m) is hard to beat.
>>
>> Moving around after inserting text requires n + 1 keystrokes: 1 to exit
>> insert mode, and n to move around. Editors which don’t have a separate
>> insert mode can do n moves with just n keystrokes.
>
> With vim, you can be in insert mode and still move around with the arrow keys.
>
> /usr/share/vim/vim91/doc/ contains about 11 megs o' text help files.
>
> Actually, one problem with vim is tooooo many ways to do things. :-)

Regarding moving around requiring n+1 keystrokes, GNU Emacs lets
you experience the power of Control-U. It is a prefix argument
that (oversimplification follows, but ...) multiplies the effect
of the next action by 4.

So, with control-U three times and an arrow key the cursor can
move 64 steps in any direction.

If you want to execute the current keyboard macro 1024 times, do
control-U 5 times, then control-X, then 'e'.

--
Robert Riches
spamtrap42@jacob21819.net
(Yes, that is one of my email addresses.)

On 21 Nov 2024 04:31:13 GMT, Robert Riches wrote:

> GNU Emacs lets you
> experience the power of Control-U. It is a prefix argument that
> (oversimplification follows, but ...) multiplies the effect of the next
> action by 4.

In general, it lets you type a numeric argument to the following command.

E.g.

CTRL-U 8 right-arrow

moves 8 steps to the right.

CTRL-U 2 0 X

enters “X” 20 times.

On 2024-11-20, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:

> On Wed, 20 Nov 2024 22:11:42 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
>
>> Both vi and emacs live in a different planet than I do.
>
> vi definitely lives someplace else in the solar system than vim or gVim.
>
> The choice was easy back when disk space was at a premium. iirc, gVim took
> around 2 MB, and emacs took over 20 MB. Of course gVim didn't tell your
> fortune, play go, or require keyboard maneuvers equivalent to playing B7
> on a guitar.

Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping (back when 8MB was a lot).

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Growth for the sake of
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | growth is the ideology
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | of the cancer cell.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Edward Abbey

On 21 Nov 2024 04:31:13 GMT, Robert Riches wrote:

> Regarding moving around requiring n+1 keystrokes, GNU Emacs lets you
> experience the power of Control-U. It is a prefix argument that
> (oversimplification follows, but ...) multiplies the effect of the next
> action by 4.

I hope it has a similar prefix to undo all the stuff I just destroyed with
Ctrl-U.

On Thu, 21 Nov 2024 05:27:37 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> On 2024-11-20, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 20 Nov 2024 22:11:42 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
>>
>>> Both vi and emacs live in a different planet than I do.
>>
>> vi definitely lives someplace else in the solar system than vim or
>> gVim.
>>
>> The choice was easy back when disk space was at a premium. iirc, gVim
>> took around 2 MB, and emacs took over 20 MB. Of course gVim didn't tell
>> your fortune, play go, or require keyboard maneuvers equivalent to
>> playing B7 on a guitar.
>
> Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping (back when 8MB was a lot).

I was thinking of the install on the HDD, not running it. I think I got
that far a couple of times before doing a purification rite of all things
emacs.

I did try it in later years when it had a GUI and menu but there never was
a compelling reason to go to it. There are the customizations but in my
dictionary loathe and lisp occur on the same page.

On Thu, 20 Nov 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Wed, 20 Nov 2024 22:11:42 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
>
>> Both vi and emacs live in a different planet than I do.
>
> vi definitely lives someplace else in the solar system than vim or gVim.
>
> The choice was easy back when disk space was at a premium. iirc, gVim took
> around 2 MB, and emacs took over 20 MB. Of course gVim didn't tell your
> fortune, play go, or require keyboard maneuvers equivalent to playing B7
> on a guitar.
>

This old classic comes to mind:

Regexing with several editors:

acme:
>Oh, | want to execute a regular expression on my text here.
>Here | go.
>| take my mouse hand off my keys.
>| move my mouse hand to my mouse
>I grip the mouse with my mouse hand
>| move the mouse to the tag strip on top of the editing buffer
>I click the tag strip
>| release the mouse
>| move my mouse hand to the keys
>| write the regex
>| take my mouse hand off the keys
>| move my mouse hand to my mouse
>I grip the mouse and press da butans
>| drag the mouse over the regex to highlight it
>| release da butans
>| watch as my regex hopefully does what it needs to do on the first try.
>I move the mouse to the editing buffer to continue inputting text
>| release the mouse
>| move my mouse hand to the keys
>| FINALLY start typing again.

Emacs:
>press both foot pedals
>press meta shift control sysrq
>play the moonlight sonata on the two extra leopards while requesting
Regex-Mode with the headstick.
>hit the electric cymbals strapped under my arm and while putting the
shift-stick | have gripped tightly with my sphincter into turbo mode.
>signal my two assistants to turn their keys in unison, NOW!
>input the regex
>release all keys and watch as emacs gracefully rearranges the text

vim:
>escape or equivalent
>: %s/foo/bar/g
>enter
>continue editing

On Thu, 20 Nov 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Wed, 20 Nov 2024 21:51:03 +0100, D wrote:
>
>> Interesting! Line numbering is one of those things I like to have
>> enabled by default. I think my most common tricks are search n' replace
>> s///g, working with buffers, !! for pulling in stuff from the terminal,
>> dt to delete to, well, too many to mention. And many have almost become
>> automatic.
>
> Buffers are one of the selling points for me. The Brief editor had them
> back in the DOS days before Borland bought it and killed it. I never could
> figure out why the Visual Studio editor was so lame in that regard. I
> haven't used Studio enough lately to bother but VS Code has a very nice
> Vim extension. "* to interact with the clipboard is one I use often.
>
> Recording key sequences to a named register os handy too.
>

Ah yes... macros, of course! I use those for smaller operations
reformating text or cut n' paste according to some simple pattern. A big
leap in vimology was when I moved from tabs to buffers. After that, tabs
seemed like it was for nerds!

On Thu, 21 Nov 2024, Robert Riches wrote:

> On 2024-11-20, Chris Ahlstrom <OFeem1987@teleworm.us> wrote:
>> Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote this post while blinking in Morse code:
>>
>>> On Tue, 19 Nov 2024 19:30:32 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>>
>>>> ... my fingers speak [vi/vim] well enough
>>>> that if I'm trying to move down the screen in other editors a string of
>>>> "j"s appear on the screen.
>>>
>>> The vi/vim apps I’ve used also support the arrow keys, like modern
>>> programs.
>>>
>>>> For sheer economy of keystrokes, vi(m) is hard to beat.
>>>
>>> Moving around after inserting text requires n + 1 keystrokes: 1 to exit
>>> insert mode, and n to move around. Editors which don’t have a separate
>>> insert mode can do n moves with just n keystrokes.
>>
>> With vim, you can be in insert mode and still move around with the arrow keys.
>>
>> /usr/share/vim/vim91/doc/ contains about 11 megs o' text help files.
>>
>> Actually, one problem with vim is tooooo many ways to do things. :-)
>
> Regarding moving around requiring n+1 keystrokes, GNU Emacs lets
> you experience the power of Control-U. It is a prefix argument
> that (oversimplification follows, but ...) multiplies the effect
> of the next action by 4.
>
> So, with control-U three times and an arrow key the cursor can
> move 64 steps in any direction.
>
> If you want to execute the current keyboard macro 1024 times, do
> control-U 5 times, then control-X, then 'e'.
>

So my earlier joke was not a joke. I twas the truth! In vim, just type
1024@a and be done with it (assuming macro is in a). ;)

On 2024-11-21 00:04, rbowman wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Nov 2024 22:11:42 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
>
>> Both vi and emacs live in a different planet than I do.
>
> vi definitely lives someplace else in the solar system than vim or gVim.

It's all the same for me, the entire vi family and the entire emacs
family live in a different planet than I do.

>
> The choice was easy back when disk space was at a premium. iirc, gVim took
> around 2 MB, and emacs took over 20 MB. Of course gVim didn't tell your
> fortune, play go, or require keyboard maneuvers equivalent to playing B7
> on a guitar.

"ted" used 3 K on disk.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

Charlie Gibbs wrote this post while blinking in Morse code:

> On 2024-11-20, Chris Ahlstrom <OFeem1987@teleworm.us> wrote:
>
>> Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote this post while blinking in Morse code:
>>
>>> On Tue, 19 Nov 2024 19:30:32 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>>
>>>> For sheer economy of keystrokes, vi(m) is hard to beat.
>>>
>>> Moving around after inserting text requires n + 1 keystrokes: 1 to exit
>>> insert mode, and n to move around. Editors which don’t have a separate
>>> insert mode can do n moves with just n keystrokes.
>>
>> With vim, you can be in insert mode and still move around with the arrow keys.
>>
>> /usr/share/vim/vim91/doc/ contains about 11 megs o' text help files.
>>
>> Actually, one problem with vim is tooooo many ways to do things. :-)
>
> Every now and then I come across some nifty trick I didn't know about.
> One of my favourites is /\<foo\> - which finds the next occurrence of
> "foo" that is a complete word, i.e. it ignores "foobar".

A quick way to do that is to put the cursor on a word and hit "*" (or "#" to
search upward).

:help *

--
Stay away from hurricanes for a while.

rbowman wrote this post while blinking in Morse code:

> On 20 Nov 2024 18:53:07 GMT, G wrote:
>
>> I didn't know there was a special way to do this. I used simply "\ foo
>> ", as you said "tooooo many ways to do things".
>
> That works, as long as there is white space.
>
> int foo, foobar
>
> for (foo=0; foo<10; foo++) {
> foobar *= 2
> }
>
> How many foos will it find?

Foo you! :-)

--
Life is a biochemical reaction to the stimulus of the surrounding
environment in a stable ecosphere, while a bowl of cherries is a
round container filled with little red fruits on sticks.

On 20/11/2024 19:18, rbowman wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Nov 2024 10:23:18 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>> On the other hand, CAD is impossible without one...
>
> CAD has a different meaning in my world.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-aided_dispatch
>
> That lead to some awkward moments when interviewing candidates who hadn't
> done any research into what they were applying for.
In the world of semi-professional fab, its Cardboard Aided Design where
you cut bits of cardboard to the shapes you want and measure or scan
them BEFORE invoking the software, or you trace them direct onto metal
and nark the outline for manual cutting,,,

--
Climate Change: Socialism wearing a lab coat.

On 2024-11-21, Chris Ahlstrom <OFeem1987@teleworm.us> wrote:

> Charlie Gibbs wrote this post while blinking in Morse code:
>
>> Every now and then I come across some nifty trick I didn't know about.
>> One of my favourites is /\<foo\> - which finds the next occurrence of
>> "foo" that is a complete word, i.e. it ignores "foobar".
>
> A quick way to do that is to put the cursor on a word and hit "*" (or "#" to
> search upward).
>
> :help *

..-- --- .-- .-.-.- - .... .- -. -.- ... .-.-.-

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Growth for the sake of
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | growth is the ideology
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | of the cancer cell.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Edward Abbey