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this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2025
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Why is 0th step of learning Emacs, learning Vim? The whole premiss that you need to know Vim or you’re unable to work on other people’s computers is ludicrous. Nano is perfectly capable editor for the times I need to use computers without Emacs.
micro is also nice, plus it's statically linked so you can just pop it into any directory without having root
Using Vim on other people's computers may not always work. I know someone who remapped 'next match' from 'n' to something else, though
--clean
helps with such configurations.Also, nano may not always be installed.
The safest way to edit a file on someone else's machine for a emacs "user" might be something like
emacs -q || nano || vim --clean || vi --clean || vi
, assuming a sane shell. (the|| vi --clean
step is probably unnecessary, becuse if it's supported, it's just vim, which would then also be available)mcedit, gedit, pico. For majority of people lack of any simple non-vi-based text editor is a corner case not worth worrying about. Definitely not enough of a problem to start ‘How to learn Emacs’ tutorial with ‘Learn Vim’.
That's true about personal devices, but at least my server doesn't have nano installed. Though, in that case, you might manage with sshfs or something similiar. Also, for the 'Learn Vim' step, you only need to know the absolute basics, like entering input mode, saving & quitting.