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You are falling in the very trap which I (or, my quoted text) warned about. Don't mix "ease of use" with "ease of learning/figuring out". They aren't the same. And let me inform you that while Microsoft Word is easy to figure out, it's not easy to use. It's very cumbersome compared to many of the Linux editors, like vi. To quote that article again:
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As a really simple example, take this arbitrary exercise: You want to move five lines (paragraphs) from the middle of a text document to the end.
In MS Word; MS WordPad; or MS Notepad; all "user-friendly" Windows text editors, the quickest way to do this is:
- Ctrl-Shift-Down
- Ctrl-Shift-Down
- Ctrl-Shift-Down
- Ctrl-Shift-Down
- Ctrl-Shift-Down
- Ctrl-X
- Ctrl-End
- Ctrl-V
(That's assuming you use the keyboard. Otherwise, you need some Click-and-Drag mouse operations and a reliable autoscroll.)
In vi, however, it is:
- d5d
- Shift-g
- p
(Or if you know vi really well, just ":1,5m$" will also work!)
Vi, which is about as "user-unfriendly" as it gets, beats Microsoft's offerings hands down. Why? Because vi was designed for functionality, while Microsoft design to be "user-friendly". Microsoft break everything down into easy steps, and so it takes far more steps to accomplish the same task.
This makes vi far quicker and easier to use for virtually all text-editing tasks. Just so long as you know how to use it. If you don't know "d5d" means "Place five lines of text in the buffer, and delete them from the document" then you're going to struggle to make vi work. But if you DO know, then you're going to fly along.
So when some newbie sees how fast and easily an experienced vi user can do stuff, he readily agrees that vi is superior to Word for text editing. Then he tries to use it himself. He starts it up, gets a screen full of ~s, and when he types, nothing appears on the screen.
He finds out about the text-entry and command modes, and starts trying to use vi with a limited knowledge of it's functions. He struggles, as there are so many things he has to learn before he can make vi work. Then he complains "vi would be much better if it was as easy to use as Word!"
But the real problem is "I don't know how to use vi and can't be bothered to learn." But that would mean the problem was with him, so he blames his problems on the software instead. Never mind all the thousands of people who are happily using vi without any problems: It's too hard to use, and must be changed!
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Yeah. So keep your jargon and facts straight before you argue, please. You may say that "something that is easy to learn is easy to use", but I would disagree. This quoted text perfectly illustrates that this isn't always (and actually very rarely) the case.
-----
As a really simple example, take this arbitrary exercise: You want to move five lines (paragraphs) from the middle of a text document to the end.
In MS Word; MS WordPad; or MS Notepad; all "user-friendly" Windows text editors, the quickest way to do this is:
- Ctrl-Shift-Down
- Ctrl-Shift-Down
- Ctrl-Shift-Down
- Ctrl-Shift-Down
- Ctrl-Shift-Down
- Ctrl-X
- Ctrl-End
- Ctrl-V
(That's assuming you use the keyboard. Otherwise, you need some Click-and-Drag mouse operations and a reliable autoscroll.)
In vi, however, it is:
- d5d
- Shift-g
- p
(Or if you know vi really well, just ":1,5m$" will also work!)
Vi, which is about as "user-unfriendly" as it gets, beats Microsoft's offerings hands down. Why? Because vi was designed for functionality, while Microsoft design to be "user-friendly". Microsoft break everything down into easy steps, and so it takes far more steps to accomplish the same task.
This makes vi far quicker and easier to use for virtually all text-editing tasks. Just so long as you know how to use it. If you don't know "d5d" means "Place five lines of text in the buffer, and delete them from the document" then you're going to struggle to make vi work. But if you DO know, then you're going to fly along.
So when some newbie sees how fast and easily an experienced vi user can do stuff, he readily agrees that vi is superior to Word for text editing. Then he tries to use it himself. He starts it up, gets a screen full of ~s, and when he types, nothing appears on the screen.
He finds out about the text-entry and command modes, and starts trying to use vi with a limited knowledge of it's functions. He struggles, as there are so many things he has to learn before he can make vi work. Then he complains "vi would be much better if it was as easy to use as Word!"
But the real problem is "I don't know how to use vi and can't be bothered to learn." But that would mean the problem was with him, so he blames his problems on the software instead. Never mind all the thousands of people who are happily using vi without any problems: It's too hard to use, and must be changed!
-----
Yeah. So keep your jargon and facts straight before you argue, please. You may say that "something that is easy to learn is easy to use", but I would disagree. This quoted text perfectly illustrates that this isn't always (and actually very rarely) the case.
