Vi Pages - the Holy War of Editors

[Why are we hiding from the police daddy?]

Which is the best editor? Vi or Emacs? Are there any other? This question is an endless source for the religious war on editor bashing. (hehe)

The following statement sums it up quite nicely:

"vi is small, fast, and easy to use. Emacs is huge, slow and easy to use :)"
From: softbase@mercury.interpath.net (Scott McMahan - Softbase Systems)

Here are some texts which you should have read before engaging in the most Holy War the Internet as seen since it existed.


Emacsculation [980723,2002-09-03]
http://www.rru.com/~meo/rants/emacs.html
A small rant on Emacs by a Vi user.
Author: Miles O'Neal meo@netads.com

Vi versus Emacs Essay (no local copy - dang!)
"A Theoretical and Experimental Comparison of Vi and Emacs".
http://gmtunx.ee.uct.ac.za/~cherie/ViEmacs/viemacs.html [obsolete]
Author: Cherie Mandy Hurwitz http://gmtunx.ee.uct.ac.za/~cherie/ [obsolete] cherie@gmtunx.ee.uct.ac.za
[1996-09-17,1997-03-29,2002-09-03]

"Vi vs Emacs Study"
"A comparative study of vi and emacs from the perspective of novice and regular users"
Twelve people were tested on both editors. Result: Emacs wins - both with newbies and skilled people. But "there is no advantage for regular vi users to change to emacs." ;-)
Author: William Knottenbelt - william@cs.uct.ac.za wjk@doc.ic.ac.uk
http://www.csn.net/~bediger/knottenbelt.txt [obsolete]
local copy
[1999-02-25,2001-06-15]

"Research Shows: There is A Perfect Editor"
http://www.users.qwest.net/~eballen1/perfect.editor.html
http://www.csn.net/~bediger/perfect.editor.html [obsolete]
Links to lots of articles about editors. Wish I'd be able to get a copy of them all...
Author: Bruce Ediger eballen1@qwest.net
[1999-02-25,2001-06-15,2002-09-03]