Subject: Pico is not quite emacs

From: Chris Garrigues <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 15:24:53 -0600 (CST)

Am I the only one who has a problem with editors which are *almost* 
emacs, but not quite?

One problem I have with pine is that it's very common for me to ^P into a 
message that I'm replying to and insert text in the middle.  I always 
want to use ^O for this because I've been doing it that way for ten 
years.  Needless to say, when I type ^O, I am surprised every time.

Also, as I was editing the above paragraph, three (count them) three 
times, I tried to use ^K as if I were in emacs.  Was there a decision 
made that the added difficutly of typing ^A^K over simply ^K was 
sufficient to warrant disallowing the functionality of emacs's ^K?  The 
minor frustration I feel every time I type ^K expands when I try to clean 
up by typing ^Y.

And, as long as I'm picking nits, I'd like ^L to center the current line 
rather than do a simple refresh.

Any thoughts?

Chris

--
Chris Garrigues                              (MIME capable) [email-masked]
Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation    +1 512 338 3328
3500 West Balcones Center Drive                     Fax +1 512 338 3838
Austin, TX  78759-6509
USA

---

From: [email-masked] (Mark Delany)
Date: 12 Feb 1994 10:06:37 +1100

>Am I the only one who has a problem with editors which are *almost* 

I tend to agree with the original poster. Though I suspect that
changing it now is way too late as you'll hit all those pico users.

Certainly I get hit by ^K and ^Y an awful lot, especially as I use
pico for small mails and switch to emacs for larger ones.

Oh well.

M.

---

From: Terry Gray <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 16:11:55 -0800 (PST)

Chris,
As a part-time emacs user, I am sympathetic to your frustration.
Remember, however, that emacs has a semi-infinite number of commands that 
can be bound to a large set of keystrokes (because of ESCape... or the 
META key, if there are any of those keyboards still around.)

In Pico we needed to live within the constraint of single control-key 
commands.  We couldn't even use ESCape as an escape option, because we 
wanted arrow keys to work.

We actually started with ^K being like emacs, but feedback from some of 
our early users suggested that this was not intuitively obvious behavior 
for our (original) target audience.  So we changed.  It has occurred to 
some of us that we could add an option that restored emacs-style Ctl-K 
behavior, and this is on the list.  Ctl-O and Ctl-Y are much more 
difficult to deal with, because we just don't have sufficient key space.

I suspect we could reduce your cognitive dissonance a bit by making it 
easier for emacs to be your default editor (e.g. having cursor motion 
into the body of the message trigger the alternate editor.)  That way 
you'd only have to re-map your fingers when in the message header :)
There are some issues in trying to do this, but we will be investigating 
the feasibility.

We welcome all suggestions, save perhaps "Make all keybindings
user-configurable..." 

-teg

---

From: Ed Greshko <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 13 Feb 1994 23:07:25 +0800 (TPE)

> Any thoughts?

	Yes, I know what you mean.  I have the same problem when I get
into a Ford Fiesta in Australia.  Everything is almost the same...but
there are enough differences that I get confused.  I was tempted to
ask Ford Australia to change their design so that it would make it
easier for me.  However, someone pointed out that if I wanted to use
a Ford Fiesta manufactured in Australia I should get used to it and
not expect Ford to change it for me...when everyone in Australia is
perfectly happy with that model.  :-) :-)

	But to be serious...if you like emacs, and are happy with
emacs, then why don't you configure emacs as your alternate editor and
use emacs?  It would be better than trying to change pico to be like
emacs...which I'm sure was never the intention.

Edward M. Greshko			Control Data Taiwan
Voice: +886-2-715-2222 x287		6/F, 131 Nanking East Road, Section 3
FAX  : +886-2-712-9197			Taipei, Taiwan R.O.C

---

From: John Stumbles <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 14:40:41 GMT

> pico for small mails and switch to emacs for larger ones.

It's not quite WordStar either.  I switch between Pico in PC-Pine and
other PC editors, many of which have WS keymapping. I can get used to ^K =
delete line/block, and ^U to undelete is exact WS, but then I find myself
going ^X to go down a line ....  <sigh>

But I do agree that it shouldn't be changed - that way lies madness!

John Stumbles                                       [email-masked]
University of Reading                                              0734 318435
Whiteknights, Reading, RG6 2AF, UK
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

---

From: Chris Garrigues <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 09:56:45 -0600 (CST)

> wanted arrow keys to work.

I certainly understand the above issues and it would be absurd to ask for
the full functionality of gnu emacs.  After all, I'd love to have things
like meta-C available, that I know that would be asking too much.  I
actually adapt fairly well to missing functionality, I just don't adapt
well to different functionality. 

> There are some issues in trying to do this, but we will be investigating 

The problem is that the functionality in the headers is very useful, so I 
don't really want to give that up.  I think mostly I just felt like 
grousing a little.  After all, this isn't the only "cognitive dissonance" 
that I suffer from:  since I also use a Mac a lot, whenever I'm in gnu 
emacs 19, I keep expecting that if I mark a region and start typing that the 
marked region will magically be deleted.  I don't suppose you can solve 
this for me.  (There was a time that I was using three editors and had a 
problem with the escape key:  One of them was teco where hitting the 
escape key twice executed my commands, so I got used to doing that often. 
Another one had escape toggle into a help screen so I kept having my 
screen refreshed needlessly.  A third one was the real problem: in the 
UCSD Pascal editor escape aborted the current insertion.  In short; 
things have been worse in the past, so I shouldn't complain too much.)

> We welcome all suggestions, save perhaps "Make all keybindings

On a more useful note:  I've loaded the mime tools for emacs (available
from wnoc-fuk.wide.ad.jp:pub/GNU/etc/emacs-mime-tools.shar) into my
system, and it would be nice if it worked when I escaped into my alternate
editor (emacs); put it in mime mode; inserted some mime stuff;  and
returned to pine. 

Chris

---

From: Eigil Krogh Sorensen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 17:21:21 PST

> Whiteknights, Reading, RG6 2AF, UK
Add this as one more reason why not to change pico:
I'm used to use elm on UNIX with vi as the editor. Please change pine to 
act just as vi ;-)

Eigil Krogh Sorensen
---------------------------------------------------------------------
	Address:        Water Quality Institute
			Science Park Aarhus
			10, Gustav Wieds Vej
			DK-8000 Aarhus C
			DENMARK.

	Phone:          +45   86 20 20 00    or
			+45   86 20 20 11  local  2114

	Fax:            +45   86 19 75 11

	E-mail:         [email-masked]
----------------------------------------------------------------------

---

From: John Stumbles <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 20:14:28 GMT

> I'm used to use elm on UNIX with vi as the editor. Please change pine to 

Now let's hear it for EDLIN! .... 8^)

---

From: "A. Hilborne" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 1994 09:15:10 +0000 (GMT)

> We welcome all suggestions, save perhaps "Make all keybindings

Making all _Pico_ keybindings user-configurable would surely answer complaints
about Pico vs Emacs.  NOrmally users wouldn't have to touch their keybindings.

--
Andrew M. Hilborne                        [email-masked]
Computing Service                    Tel: +44 91 222 8226 (direct)
University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.    +44 91 222 8039 (Comp Service office)

---

From: David L Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 1994 09:39:35 -0800 (PST)

Andrew,

The problem is that user-configurable keybindings make for a customer 
support nightmare!  If you want Pico with configurable keys, get EMACS ;)

Thanks for the suggestion!

--DLM

|\ |  |\/|  David L. Miller    [email-masked]  (206) 685-6240
|/ |_ |  |  Software Engineer, Pine Development Team   (206) 685-4045 (FAX)
University of Washington, Networks & Distributed Computing
4545 15th Ave NE, Seattle WA 98105, USA