[openbeos] Re: patch for vim on haiku

On 2005-03-25 at 17:47:52 [+0100], Michael Phipps wrote:
> Something else to consider is that BSD is primarilly a CLI system (at least 
> by
> default). X Windows is an *add-on* to BSD. It is not integral to the system
> like app_server is to Haiku.
> 
> My personal take is that neither Vim nor any other cli editor should be
> included into a downloadable Haiku base. Downloading software with Haiku is
> pretty easy. I think that we need to make the minimal download as small as
> possible while providing what most people need.

With this argument you could strip the base off virtually everything save 
Tracker + Deskbar, Firefox (or Mozilla), BeMail (or some other mail client), 
and a media player. Why a text editor? What most people want would be a word 
processor, but that is probably not part of a base distro.

> StyledEdit is an incredible
> piece of work and I think that is it more than adequite for what most people
> will want/need and should be showcased since it is a Haiku native app. :-D

I don't want to belittle the work of the StyledEdit creators, but honestly, 
who does use it and for what purpose? (I believe, the only thing I've ever 
used it for was to write ReadMe files included with software, since one could 
basically do plain text but nevertheless beautify it by adding some text 
attributes like font size and color -- and I'm not even doing that anymore, 
since using Pe.) To write a letter? Heck, I use a word processor. For editing 
config files? That's certainly nothing an average used does or should do. For 
personal notes? I want an organizer kind of app. Editing of structured text 
(HTML, source code)? I prefer an editor that does at least syntax 
highlighting.

I seriously don't think, StyledEdit is really adequate for any kind of job. 
Save for writing ReadMe files that look a bit better than plain text (and 
make less work than HTML) maybe. It's just that an OS is expected to include 
at least a simple editor app. As it is expected to include a CLI and an 
editor for it (all the OSs I have in mind, do that anyway). We can certainly 
go a different way, but than we can as well cut more radically (Terminal, 
StyledEdit, DiskProbe, telnetd,...).

Personally I find BeOS mostly a quite well balanced basic distro, though. I 
would probably remove a few things and add some others instead, but basically 
that's what I'd have in mind.

CU, Ingo

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