Time to talk about my writerdeck • Hacker News Board

Re: Time to talk about my writerdeck

#301

Post by lproven » Thu, May 28, 2026, 10:16 AM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #255

lproven wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You'd have to find a suitable editor. You didn't follow the link. You should have. I built that USB-DOS tool and it contains a wide choice of word processors, from plain text editors with the WordPerfect command keys, to full-on professional tools, plus a choice of outliners and also a spreadsheet for the sort of writer who needs to model stuff -- like Andy Weir or John Barnes, to pick two I rather like.

I've used a long list of editors and word processors over the years, including WordStar (included in USB-DOS). My problem isn't that there aren't editors, that they aren't included with the distribution, or that they cannot be otherwise obtained and installed. It's that they're not suitable , given my needs, experience, and preferences. For me. I've well over 40 years muscle memory devoted to vi/vim. I like and prefe…

OK, fair enough. I first learned Vi on SCO Xenix in 1988 and I instantly hated it, and 38 years later, I still do.

About 2-3Y into my career, IBM CUA came along and transformed DOS software: everything got a new CUA UI. Word 5, proprietary UI; Word 5.5, CUA. WordPerfect 4, proprietary UI; WP 5, CUA.

Since then, if an editor isn't CUA, life is too short: I won't even consider it.

There's a standard PC UI. All Linux GUIs follow it more or less, except for the ones that intentionally chose to Do Something Else, to Be Different for Difference's Sake. (GNOME, Elementary, a few others.)

It's time the shell/console world caught up.

Leave the old one as an option for the old timers. Everyone else gets CUA by default.

But that's just me.

Re: Time to talk about my writerdeck

#302

Post by lproven » Thu, May 28, 2026, 10:17 AM UTC

OriginalPenguin wrote: post #257

lproven wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite remarkable, isn't it? It is how Linux used to be in the 1990s: tiny, simple, blindingly fast compared to the big lumbering commercial OSes... ... Which now are also Linux. Which is terribly terribly sad.

They weren’t blindingly fast then. The hardware was so much slower in the 90s. It’s difficult to remember just how slow a 5400rpm hard drive was.

Oh no it isn't. I started before floppy disks were widespread. Floppies were sooooooo good after tape cassettes. :-)

Re: Time to talk about my writerdeck

#303

Post by dredmorbius » Thu, May 28, 2026, 6:20 PM UTC

lproven wrote: post #301

dredmorbius wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used a long list of editors and word processors over the years, including WordStar (included in USB-DOS). My problem isn't that there aren't editors, that they aren't included with the distribution, or that they cannot be otherwise obtained and installed. It's that they're not suitable , given my needs, experience, and preferences. For me. I've well over 40 years muscle memory devoted to vi/vim. I like and prefe…

OK, fair enough. I first learned Vi on SCO Xenix in 1988 and I instantly hated it, and 38 years later, I still do. About 2-3Y into my career, IBM CUA came along and transformed DOS software: everything got a new CUA UI. Word 5, proprietary UI; Word 5.5, CUA. WordPerfect 4, proprietary UI; WP 5, CUA. Since then, if an editor isn't CUA, life is too short: I won't even consider it. There's a standard PC UI. All Linux GU…

My first experience, on a BSD machine at about the same time, was similarly traumatic.

I've since learnt the tool. Its ubiquity (particularly over pretty much all of the other ones I'd listed, at least on the machines I had ready access to) cemented that.

I did like EVE when I'd used it, but have had little access to VAXen since. And was proficient for a time on Emacs (until a subsequent gig's director insisted that if it didn't come installed software wouldn't be added to our Unix server). My WP-fu fell with the end of DOS, though I did hang on for quite some time, up to the late 1990s / early aughts.

CUA has its benefits, but it is only one of multiple competing keyboard standards. Everything is convention.

Oddly: I'm vi/vim in the editor, but readline on the shell. No, I don't set vimkeys bindings in Bash. But I do drop to bash as my shell editor.

Also: for those stumbling across this thread later, "Mastering the Vim Language" is an excellent video I'd come across in my third decade of using the editor, and learned much from. It's now 11 years old itself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlR5gYd6um0>

Vim may have a long learning curve, but it also has a steep payoff function.