Religious wars (was Re: [Beowulf] A press release)

[Gerry Creager]

Hey!  I still code fortran.  I don't require line numbers, save after 
those long weekends when I have trouble remembering where my office is...

It's Basic that liked line numbers, RGB.

Robert G. Brown wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Jul 2008, Joe Landman wrote:
> 
>> Rumor has it that C-c C-o C-f C-f C-e C-e instructs emacs to make you 
>> a cup of coffee. :^
>>
>> I personally want an editor without all these fancy things:  just 
>> syntax highlighting for C/C++/Perl/Bash/Tcsh/Fortran/config files, 
>> that has line numbers, and intelligent wrapping/splitting.  Can run 
>> from a GUI. Does split windows.
>>
>> gvim does all these things.  But you have to be very careful typing. 
>> Because it it vi.
>>
>> If Komodo had window splitting and intelligent wrapping, it would be 
>> good.
>>
>> I looked at kate, but it requires kde.
>>
>> pico/nano are ok, but they don't do line numbers, or split windows, or 
>> intelligent wrapping.
> 
> I don't know if it has all the features you want -- line numbers?  Ugh.
> You must be coding in runes -- oh, wait, I mean Fortran;-) -- but you
> might look at another ancient editor from the elder age of elves and men
> -- jove (Jonathan's Own Version of Emacs).  Call it "emacs lite".  Call
> it "emacs written in C instead of lisp so it isn't infinitely and
> pointlessly extendable".  Call it "I'll have an order of emacs, please,
> but hold the kitchen sink".
> 
> It don't be doin' colors.  It is intelligent enough to do errors in only
> a handful of programming languages.  It can be gussied up a bit with
> macros and keymaps, but we're talking hanging your own pictures on the
> wall, not rebuilding the house so it supports martian lifeforms using
> nothing but lisp.  On a good day it can be enticed into managing
> indentation for you in code
> 
> Now mind you, jove doesn't do GUI's.  xterm, please, and none of these
> fancy "smart" xterms, neither, just the plain old vanilla xterm.  You
> can split screens, edit 3 or four files at once, invoke make from inside
> and keystroke through errors.  Once upon a time I did use it to run an
> editable shell in a subwindow (this was before e.g. bash or tcsh, when
> if you wanted editing in /bin/sh or /bin/csh you had to do it this way)
> but tcsh or bash are both much better native and I haven't done it for
> years.
> 
> The bad thing about jove is that so few people still use it that it
> doesn't ever make it into e.g. fedora.  I'm sure it is in Debian (what
> isn't?).  I have a perfectly functional personal rpm build, though (and
> would be happy to donate it to your cause), and the FIRST thing I do
> when moving into a new system is import jove's rpm and do a rebuild and
> install.  Otherwise I can't function.
> 
> I just use one editor, you see.  I'm typing this reply in jove.  I use
> jove to write poetry and prose (latex makefiles and templates).  I use
> jove to write C.  perl.  php.  text.  I resort to ooffice only in
> desperation, and then get pissed when Ctrl-A or Ctrl-Shift-< don't do
> what they are "supposed" to do (move me to head of line or head of
> document) and instead pop up some inane window offering to polish my
> frobnitz.
> 
> Alas, we live in a dark age, and one day jove may pass beyond human ken
> when men and elves forget it.  But it is not THIS day, and we are not
> THOSE men.  Or elves, for that matter.
> 
> Special project number 113 in my list of special projects I'll never get
> to is to actually make xjove work, using gtk widgets, so that it no
> longer needs an xterm to function correctly.  And I'd really like to
> tweak its reformatting routines -- it sometimes gets overzealous,
> especially with email.  And its file recovery facility is terse to the
> point of being cryptic and could be a tiny bit warmer and fuzzier and
> nurturing.
> 
> Still, it stands as an example of enduring greatness.  I've tried --
> hard -- to wean myself from jove and move on to emacs, since emacs is
> "supported".  My record is a whole week on emacs, at the end of which
> time my facial tic began to worry my wife and the boys began to wonder
> why I was wandering the house shaking my head and uttering obscenities.
> At the end of it I woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat,
> having had a horrible dream in which every other word of a document was
> presented to me in chartreuse, and chartreuse had some sort of
>>> meaning<<, a color out of space as it were, and I could hear the
> hounds scratching at the corners of the document trying to get in and
> wreak their will on all the hapless words within.
> 
> I immediately sacrificed a chicken onto the keyboard to purge the
> hounds, cranked up jove in its comforting smooth black on white text,
> and spent an hour just moving up and down in the document and felt much
> better.
> 
>    rgb
> 
>>
>> Ugh.
>>
>>>
>>> /me ducks
>>>
>>> -stephen
>>>
>>
>>
> 

-- 
Gerry Creager -- gerry.creager at tamu.edu
Texas Mesonet -- AATLT, Texas A&M University
Cell: 979.229.5301 Office: 979.862.3982 FAX: 979.862.3983
Office: 1700 Research Parkway Ste 160, TAMU, College Station, TX 77843