[Eug-lug] Computer time

[Bob Miller]

Jamie wrote:

> clearly pico/nano are simple text editors, not fancy programming
> environments or word processors.. just a simple text editor.

Yes.

That's a virtue not to be overlooked.  Each of us has limited time to
commit to learning new systems, so we ought to focus on those that
will actually help us most.

If you're going to spend 20+ hours a week editing text files, then by
all means, invest the time to learn emacs.  If you're going to make
a one line change in a config file every couple of weeks, then why
bother?

As a software developer, I don't regret having learned emacs for a
minute.  Being able to customize emacs's C++ autoindentation for a
given client's coding style standard, to pick an example, is great.
But I'm aware that 97% of the people using Linux don't need that.
(Actually, I can't think of any task other than programming that
involves heavy use of text files these days.  Plain text used to be a
more widely used document format.  Of course, lots of people are
programming...)

That's why I love Apple's old ClarisWorks office suite.  I create five
"office" documents a year.  ClarisWorks had just about enough
functionality for me, and what it had was very accessible so I could
get things done.  OpenOffice is hard for me to use, both because it
has too many bells and whistles, and because I can never find
anything.  Did ClarisWorks (nee AppleWorks) ever get ported to MacOSX,
BTW?

-- 
Bob Miller                              K<bob>
kbobsoft software consulting
http://kbobsoft.com                     kbob at jogger-egg.com