[plug] [why not staroffice]

[Colin Muller]

tlee wrote:
> I am a newbie and have been suffering with Slackware, but not using Xfree I also
> found joe to be the easiest editor. I thought that all of you would be using
> Staroffice editor which I assumed would be similar to ms office word, and have a
> facility for typing in non document mode? Why all the talk about an editor?

Editors like vi(m) and emacs have facilities which speed up a
programmer/sysadmin's work and which a word processor like Staroffice's
tend not to include. Just a few of examples: search and replace based on
regular expressions, copying and pasting to and from named buffers, and
the capacity to run the scripts (and compile and run the programs) which
you are editing from within the editor itself.

Also, these editors tend to start up in a split-second, are usable on
remote machines even over very slow links, and can be made to do
everything they do with a few keystrokes, without requiring you ever to
reach for your mouse. So programmers and sysadmins tend to use the
editors rather than the word processors for config file, script and
program editing.

The efficiencies come at the price of a steep learning curve for
newcomers, so using these editors can be daunting at first. Still, once
you've used them for a while, you'll come to realise that there are all
sorts of ways in which, despite initial appearances, your word processor
is rather primitive in comparison.

Colin