Re: An 'ae' testimony
On Sun, May 23, 1999 at 11:13:29AM +1000, Craig Sanders wrote:
> > Well, what can the bootdisk makers say about that, but - who cares?!
> > I use joe all the time, but I do not complain that the boot disk
> > doesn't contain it, and that I am "restricted to a primitive editor"
> > and I have to "think about each individual keystroke" etc etc...
>
> you are making the mistake of assuming that the boot disk is solely for
> installation of new debian systems.
>
> it's not.
>
> it's called the "rescue" disk for a reason.
How did you come to that conclusion (that I don't know that it is a
rescue disk)?
> you are also making the mistake of assuming that joe is in any way a
> standard tool. it is not. the only two text editors which can lay claim
> to being a standard part of any unix are ed and vi.
On a rescue disk you don't need standard tools. You need any kind of
tools that do their job. If there would be standard tools on it, then
we would have to include X and at least two emacs variants on it ;)
> > You have to have a broader view (is that the expression?) in this
> > case, since it is not only yours boot disk, but everyone elses.
>
> i think it is you who needs the broader view. the world is not composed
> entirely of newbies seeking escape from dos/windows. in fact, it's fair
> to say that complete newbies aren't our target market, we make a high
> quality distribution perfectly suited to experienced unix users. even
> so, we support them by including a simple editor (ae) on the rescue
> disk...why should we do less for our target market?
No, I don't think that including ae was done becuse of the
user-friendliness - ae, as any usual unix text editor, is something that
complete newbies don't like. If we cared about newbies, we would get a
MS-DOS edit clone or even start up the X just after booting (I don't exactly
know how, but you get the point).
> debian has been criticised in the past for failing to include vi on the
> rescue floppy. we copped a lot of flack for not having one as it is a
> tool which any experienced unix user can reasonably expect to find on a
> rescue floppy.....
However, the situation is a bit more complicated than what it may seem
to an innocent bystander - we have the boot disk, and the rescue disk
in the same image, i.e. on the same 1.44MB - and that is a really practical
reason why we needed to put a very very small (yet functional) editor on it.
Debian should not be criticized because of that decision, it was completely
logical in these circumstances.
Also, I don't think that most of the people using Debian are experienced
Unix users. The majority of the users aren't dumb, but they also don't
know ksh scripting. For these people, ae is a perfectly valid editor, not
too different from vi, joe, pico, ee, or anything similar (by look).
> > If you want all of the stuff you commonly use on the boot disk, modify
> > it yourself. Simple :)
>
> i don't want all the stuff i commonly use. i just want the bare minimum,
> and that includes a decent editor.
Ae is an editor decent enough for the bare minimum cathegory... but you're
free to disagree.
--
enJoy -*/\*- http://jagor.srce.hr/~jrodin/
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