On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 10:15:45AM -0700, Adam Williamson wrote:
On Fri, 2020-06-26 at 12:39 -0400, Neil Horman wrote:
>
> Also, have we asked the question, what default editor are other distros setting?
> I've honestly never looked.
The Change page says "More in line with the default editor of other
distributions." But it doesn't give more detail, so I did a bit of
research!
Thanks!
Ubuntu's default is nano, per various search results.
openSUSE's (I tested the Leap 15.1 GNOME live image) is...mostly vi,
though this is implemented some other way than $EDITOR, because `echo
$EDITOR` shows nothing. `visudo` and `git commit` run vi, but
`systemctl edit` runs nano. Not sure what's going on there.
I know git hard codes vi as the final default, so that tracks, I'm not sure
how
visudo and systemctl pick an editor. Etiher way, whatever we pick, we probably
shouldn't implement it like this.
At least as of 2015, Arch considered changing to nano but stuck with
vi, though one of their key arguments at the time was "everyone else
uses vi", and it seems the issue was slightly complicated by the
question of what packages would or wouldn't be in their 'core':
https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2015-April/027133.html
As of 2019 it still seems to be vi:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=245675
Mint's default seems to be nano, though like openSUSE, it is doing this
some way other than by setting $EDITOR.
Mints just a derivative of openSuse, isn't it? It would make sense that this
followed.
So, it's a bit of a mixed bag, overall. But Ubuntu and Mint both
using
nano is pretty significant.
Yeah, but significant in what way? We have two fairly popular distributions
using nano, but over 1,000,000 people trying to figure out how to exit vi on
stackexchange. Is the user base for other distros defaulting to vi just that
much bigger?
> > Don't focus on git. It's not just about git. git
was just a convenient
> > example of something that launches the default text editor.
> >
> Sure, we can substitue any other tool here that has to fork an editor from the
> command line, and some of those will be far more in line with what a novice
> non-developer might use. I just think for those users, nano likely isn't going
> to move the needle much, and I'm not sure how many of those users Fedora gets,
> or looses on this point. I know we can't really get that data, but it sure
> would be great to have.
>
> > > So the user you are describing
> > >
> > > 1) Isn't skilled in command line usage
> > > 2) Chose to use the command line anyway, despite having a littany of
IDE's
> > > available
> > > 3) Was sufficiently well versed in development process to chose to use an
SCM,
> > > and to search for commands to work with it (setting asside their lack of
> > > understanding of what they were doing)
> > > 4) But wasn't sufficiently well versed enough to go back and find out
how to use
> > > the editor that their scm choice chose to default to
> > >
> > > I just don't see that that person really exists.
> >
> > There are literally multiple people in the thread telling you this
> > literally happened to them or to people they know who asked them for
> > help. I am one of them.
> I think thats an overstatement. If it isnt, I apologize, but I really have a hard
> time believing that they comply with 1-3 (those are entirely believable), but
> then threw their hands up in the air when confronted with a window that they
> could sort of edit text in. As shown above, typing "I typed <x> in and
this
> wierd screen poped up that I could kind of edit" into google answered that
> question in the top result.
Sure, like I wrote elsewhere in the thread, it's probably less of a
complete roadblock than it used to be. But it's still an unnecessary
pain point. Yes, people can probably get through it in fifteen minutes
these days, but it's still unnecessarily annoying. Why cause them the
trouble?
Thats a fair question. I thinik the best answer I could give is one of
balance.
I can't argue that it may be a pain point for new users, but for our existing
user base, the change to something else is a hassle (arguably less of a hassle
because they have learned how to set the default to what they want, but I never
like the idea of our creating more work for our existing users when we don't
know that an equally large portion of new users will benefit). I say that
keeping in mind that we're assuming that new users will struggle with vi, I
think its also possible that new users will have my good experience with this
sort of roadblock, as much so as the negative experience you had.
Neil
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | XMPP: adamw AT happyassassin . net
http://www.happyassassin.net
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