[ale] Survey -- preferred Text Editor

[Jim Kinney]

vi has macros. If I can refind the vi macro website I'll post a link. Like
using lisp, the macros can do some pretty heavy lifting. The most I've ever
used are the docbook extensions (which are pretty useful!).

I looked at lisp once and realized I would need an extra keyboard just for
the parentheses I would would wear out :-)


On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 4:20 PM, David Raker <dmr at naunetcorp.com> wrote:

>  Emacs.
>
> My aunt wrote a 500 page genealogy book which she needed typeset.   It had
> been written in MSWorks 3 on an ancient Macintosh (c. 1990). Microsoft had
> abandoned the file format (and then Works for Mac) nearly 20 years earlier,
> so no modern systems could read the file.  After some work getting the file
> to be readable by anything less Jurassic, I was left with a text file full
> of mangled formatting, random whitespace, broken paragraphs, etc.  Since
> much of the book took the form of nested descriptive lists and block
> quotes, nothing could be done until this was fixed.
>
> I began doing this manually, but based on the progress I was making, it
> would have taken me a few full time weeks to accomplish. I was able to
> build some Lisp macros in emacs to automate most of the work, inserting
> LaTex along the way, and reduced what would have taken weeks of manual work
> into a few hours (including learning Lisp for the purpose).
>
> I could also have done something similar using some other scripting
> language, sed, etc, but for some tasks it is easier to record a macro and
> for others to write one.  Emacs provides both, and I used both.
>
> I am sure vi can do plenty of heavy lifting as well, but I have never
> tried.  Most other text editors simply don't have any facility for doing
> things like that.
>
>
>    What's everyone preferred text editor?
>
>
> --
>
>  David M. Raker
>
> Director, *Naunet Corporation*
> ☎ (678) 287-0693 x131 or (855) NAUNET-1 x131
> FAX: (678) 783-7843
>
>
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-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
*
*Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain
at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail.
It won't fatten the dog.
- Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain
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