Alright, world.
I just wanted everyone to know something.
...
I'm a VIMmer.
...
Yes. Me. That guy who bashed it.
A lot.
I'm trying to become used to modal editing.
It's hard, but I'm getting it.
The commands are still pretty fubar'd, but I guess it's not that bad. I'm still using a VERY basic subset of the insert features and still haven't quite gotten the idea of native Yanking and Pasting. Graphical VIM isn't bad for 'real' editing so far, and VIM is good for line edits and stuff. (don't ream me on that - I simply feel that GUI's are better suited for large file edits.)

In other news - I hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving. I know I'm gonna.

In other OTHER news - diakonos is STILL mega awesome.

(Okay - I realize that I've been inactive forever. I just feel like I need to write this out, and I don't want to jump down someone's throat for it. I also know that most people that may read this have NO idea what I'm talking about.)

Okay - Most of you know that I've used GNU/Linux for quite some time. I love it for quite a few reasons, one of which being the amount of freedom of choice you have over what software you run. I also love it for it's generally user friendly nature. (Now- I understand that my definition of user friendly and yours probably differ quite a bit. However, just humor me for a while and for the rest of this post, 'user friendly' will mean 'how easy something is to pick up if you are willing to learn it'. Please note that I did not say 'How easy something something is to pick up based on past experiences'. There is a DISTINCT difference - one that may not be familiar to you if all you've used is Windows or a Mac.)


I digress. I use GNU/Linux. I like it. It's user friendly and gives me control of the computer. Now, there is a war occurring between approximately four different types of people:

VI vs.
EMACS vs.
NANO vs.
people who have no idea what I'm talking about


Check them out. Google is your friend if you don't know what I'm talking about.

I've been happily using nano since I've started learning the Linux command line (BASH if you want to get technical). It's a lovely little text editor, in my opinion. Some Linux users are elitist - I should know. I am. I have right to be. I've been at it awhile. I know my shit, as it were. However, there's a line between being elitist and being silly. Some 'serious' GNU/Linux users look down upon nano as an inefficient excuse for a text editor. This couldn't be farther from the truth. In fact, I see both  Emacs and VI as monolithic, unfocused and - most importantly - EXTREMELY difficult to use.

VI (and if I'm not mistaken - EMACS as well) utilises an extremely counter intuitive way of editing a text document. When you open a document for editing, what is it you want to do? Add or remove characters, I suppose. At least that's what I want to do. This isn't how vi sees it. In fact, I'm not quite sure WHAT vi's devs were quite thinking when they made the default 'mode' one that allows you to only delete characters. If you want to INSERT characters, you have to press either 'a' to enter 'insertion' mode after the current character, 'i' to enter BEFORE the current character, 'o' to open a new line below the current line and enter insertion mode on the new line, 'A' to open insertion mode at the end of the current line, or 'I' to open insertion mode before the first non-whitespace character. And this is just one mode. You know how nano handles that? You scroll where you want to be in the document with the arrow keys and *GASP* start typing. If you want to find something, you type '/w' followed by what you want to find. (the W stands for 'where', surprisingly).

What is it called when you move a selection of text from the current document to the clipboard and then delete it from the document? Cutting. VI calls this 'yanking'. Dirty jokes aside, I see no reason to change the name of an action that 90% of the computing population recognizes. This sort of ambiguity is just what VI seems to use constantly, in it's keybinding and naming conventions. For an example of this, check this out: VI Keybinding List

I realize that the completeness of commands is a good thing (if you can think of a reason to perform a certain action on a text file, you can probably do it through some obscure keypress in VI or it's sucessor VIM.) However, I believe that a button to 'Join the current line with the next line' is a bit much.

Nano is PERFECTLY capable as a text editor. It features what most people who don't program on a regular basis want from a commandline editor. (It even features everything I want out of a text editor, and I program regularly.)

I've never understood why cryptic keyboard shortcuts and what appears to me to be unintuitive 'modes' for text input are a good idea. Granted I've never taken the time to learn vim (or emacs for that matter), but I've never had any need to do so.

Being a proud nano user, I don't quite understand WHY I should take the time to learn some cryptic syntax and keybindings when there is a perfectly capable text editor that does all that I need out of it. Being told by some (like 'peets' from the Arch Linux forums) that ' learning VIM will make me a happier human being'. Bullshit, I say. I'm perfectly happy with nano, and how presumptuous of you to assume that VIM will actually make me happier.

Oh - and people bitch and moan about how you can't change nano's default keybindings. Use Diakonos. Srsly.

EDIT: Okay - I was a little harsh here. The 'insert' mode is still a little silly (until you get used to it) - but vi does have some advantages over nano. Also- diakonos RAWKS.

A user review of Symphony

Alright guys - I know this is not everyone's cup of tea, but bear with me.


Alright - so SymphonyOS(http://www.symphonyos.com) is a linux distribution that utilizes a new desktop enivironment called Mezzo. I was not overly thrilled with their packaging for the operating system overall, but that really wasn't the fault of the UI. However, while I think that the new UI is relatively well designed and rather polished, I feel that there are small aspects of it that keep it at merely Okay at best and hardly usable at worst.

Well, what does Mezzo look like? Well, check it out here. Notice that there is quite a bit different from KDE / GNOME  or Windows Explorer.  Mezzo seeks to do away with the idea that the desktop is a glorified view into your file manager (Everything that goes into the Desktop folder shows up on the desktop.)  The four corners of the screen are utilized such that one corner is designated a commonly performed action. The top left corner is like "My Computer" in that it opens a link between you and your file manager. The top right is like "My Documents", lower left like the "KMenu" or the "Start Menu" from KDE and Windows, and the lower right is your trashcan. This allows users to ram the mouse into any corner and get a commonly performed action. So far everything looks good, but it isn't until you start using the software that its flaws become painfully apparent.

I must admit. I don't like eyecandy. Useless things just serve to distract me. I use Openbox and pypanel in Linux and keep most things minimized to the system tray in Windows, just so I don't go on a tangent and lose an hour of work. It still happens this way, there's just not much of a way to keep me more focused short of medication. I also use Linux because I enjoy taking something apart just to put it back together. I enjoy the inner workings of the system.  SymphonyOS has taken up the banner of the newer "desktop" oriented linux distributions, working to hide as much of the configuration from the end-user as possible. This is an admirable enough goal, but what happens when something goes wrong? This is exactly what happened to me.

I happily booted the latest SymphonyOS live CD and all went well until I had to actually login. At this point (which is right after the graphical server starts) all I could see were four words printed in white on a black screen. "Cannot display this Resolution". "No problem," I thought,  "I'll just edit the configuration file to support my screen." I then commenced to bail out of the GUI into the Command line.  I was fine until I found out that the system didn't contain any other editor than vi. Again - I must confess. I think of myself as a power user, but the thought of using emacs or vi just scares me a little bit. I know how to use joe, nano and pico and that has never been a problem because at least one of these three has been present on a new install of just about every distribution of linux / herd / bsd I have ever installed. Not in Symphony. I was forced to use vi. I suppose this is because the team at Symphony supposes their default is good enough for most systems. However, the problem was in the refresh rate. Most geeks worth their weight in silicon realize that all LCD's have a constant refresh rate of 60 Hz. This default is set for 75 - 85 Hz and this was causing my problem. The fact that I could not use any text editor that I was accostumed to added to the diffculty of actually editing the config file.

Once I had everything set the way it should have been, I got to actually get into the UI and I have to say - the UI is definitely different. The first thing I went to do was setup my ethernet connection, which meant I had to open a terminal. To do this I had to click on the lower left corner of the screen and then click on Terminal in the favorite applications column. This is intuitive, quick and painless. No problems here. After I had setup my ethernet connection I simply wanted to browse the web with some music playing so I started firefox. When firefox was started, I wanted to start a music player (didn't really matter which one as It was just a test of the OS, and Symphony is debian based so i could install any I wanted relatively easily if and when I booted into a real installation of it for the first time). However, I found that when I pressed the program button, the current programs weren't minimized and the menu popped up behind them. Oops.

I also had an unsolved problem with launching Xterm. I launched the first session to do the ethernet configuration, and then closed it. However, I could not lauch any subsequent instances of the program. I also could not figure out how to make it any other way than the Favorite program list. It's usability problems like these two that have made me wait until Mezzo is a bit more mature to try again. (I've neglected that these usability issues were present in a beta I tested approximately 10 to 12 months ago) However, I do believe that Mezzo is rounding itself out nicely, as a lot of things that were not present in my first test are now close to complete.

All things aside, Mezzo looks to be shaping into a promising, albeit different, user interface for a gnu/linux desktop. My main issues were not actually with the interface but more so with the developers lack of consideration for the experienced Linux user. There is no real portal into the core of the system here. This coupled with the shortcomings of the default build itself make for a subpar user experience at this point in Symphony's development.