Re: Preferred editor and pager
On Thu, 13 Mar 1997, Heiko Schlittermann wrote:
> Ian Jackson wrote ...
> : We keep having problems where programs invoke a less-powerful or
> : less-desired-by-the-user pager or editor.
>
> ... I thought, we had have the simple solution:
>
> Default editor is `ae', as it's included in the boot disks set,
> as well es default pager is `more'.
it still annoys the hell out of me that 'vipw' invokes ae by default
instead of vi. 'vi' in 'vipw' means vi, not ae. It is counter-intuitive
for a program named after vi to launch something completely different to
vi unless the user has explicitly done something to override the default
intuitive behaviour.
yes, i know how to set the EDITOR variable. i do that. it doesn't help at
all on machines which are freshly installed and which haven't had their
.bashrc tweaked yet.
IMO, vipw should be modified so that if /usr/bin/vi exists, it invokes vi.
otherwise it invokes ae. The EDITOR variable overrides this default
behaviour, of course.
and the same should be done for less and other programs which can launch
an editor.
> If the user can successfully drive emacs, vi, or whatever, she should
> be able to get the knowledge about changing the above defaults ...
that argument doesn't wash. it's almost (but not quite :-) as valid as
'if the user bothered using their brain then they'd be able to figure
out vi'.
craig
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