Slashdot Mirror

It's an interesting article, but I have trouble sympathizing with anyone "suffering" with low speed DSL. I lived and worked in Benin, West Africa for four years, with a DSL connection that was barely any faster than dial-up. I even got myself a dial up connection as well, to compare, and found them nearly equivalent during most of the day.

Here's what I learned about it: http://www.therandymon.com/index.php?/166-Life-in-56K.html

I can tell you one thing, the idea of downloading an ISO and burning it just disappears. Youtube is not an option (I don't even bother clicking on the links). And most crappy webpages stuffed to the gills with scripts, javascript, counters, ad displayers, and the like, are useless. I did a lot of websurfing with Lynx, which I'm surprised to say was a better experience for many sites, including sometimes this one.

Good luck with your DSL, buddy. I hope you don't suffer too much during the drone wars.

When I wrote my book http://dictatorshandbook.net/ I was using LaTeX on a Linux box, so in addition to regular (less-periodic) backups of the entire computer I put in place a system for backing up just the manuscript directory, as often as I wanted (usually at the end of a night of editing and writing). A USB key, a WebDAV directory, and an email account were all I needed, and here's the little Bash script I wrote to make it all work: http://www.therandymon.com/content/view/236/98/ This is one of the things I love about Linux as a writing environment.

I use SpiderOak for my config and dot files, but still rely on burning the occasional DVD or CD-R for my other stuff, and I store the disks offsite. I know that's old-fashioned in the new, hip world of cloud storage, but I live in a place with slow internet and don't have the bandwidth for fancier stuff. And the DVD burning works, boo-yah.

I did something somewhat similar in Nicaragua in 2001. Built a SUSE 7.1 machine that had previously been running Win95. I had one hell of a time of it, too. Good memories. I wrote about it at http://therandymon.com/content/view/68/98/

Annoyingly, even poorer countries are increasingly uninterested in repurposing old machines these days. They want donors to provide - through NGO projects, etc. - new hardware running whatever is the latest. Not an easy sell.

Several exist. On Linux check out Curn (a java app with no GUI) or Rawdog (a Python app, I think; maybe PHP). I use both and like them. Rawdog produces my personal feed at http://www.therandymon.com/rawdogger.html and I can access it from any device on any OS. I stayed with the stock CSS, but you can customize it any way you like. Have fun!

I can understand the disappointment, but why do so many nerds feel like they're absolutely screwed as a result? There are a huge number of alternatives. Any iOS or Android device has more RSS-reader apps than you can shake a stick at (I use RSSDemon and like it). Firefox has their "live bookmarks," the Opera browser handles RSS feeds expertly, Linux users have akregator and a couple of others. If you're a nerd with a website, install rawdog and create your own reader (I made one at http://www.therandymon.com/rawdogger.html with the feeds I like to read) or try something like CURN (http://therandymon.com/content/view/188/98/, a small java app you can run on your own machine and that can either create an HTML feed for you or email the results anywhere you want them.

I love RSS and use it extensively, on many platforms. I never quite got Google Reader but for me it wasn't as good as a dedicated app. The fact that GoogleReader is going down the tubes doesn't mean the end of civilization, people: there are a lot of alternatives. Maybe nothing quite the same (yet!) but soon. And anyway, if it was so good, there's a niche open now for an enterprising geek to whip up something similar and make some money. Hopefully that geek will create something that doesn't include all that social-networky horsecrap.

I can understand the disappointment, but why do so many nerds feel like they're absolutely screwed as a result? There are a huge number of alternatives. Any iOS or Android device has more RSS-reader apps than you can shake a stick at (I use RSSDemon and like it). Firefox has their "live bookmarks," the Opera browser handles RSS feeds expertly, Linux users have akregator and a couple of others. If you're a nerd with a website, install rawdog and create your own reader (I made one at http://www.therandymon.com/rawdogger.html with the feeds I like to read) or try something like CURN (http://therandymon.com/content/view/188/98/, a small java app you can run on your own machine and that can either create an HTML feed for you or email the results anywhere you want them.

I love RSS and use it extensively, on many platforms. I never quite got Google Reader but for me it wasn't as good as a dedicated app. The fact that GoogleReader is going down the tubes doesn't mean the end of civilization, people: there are a lot of alternatives. Maybe nothing quite the same (yet!) but soon. And anyway, if it was so good, there's a niche open now for an enterprising geek to whip up something similar and make some money. Hopefully that geek will create something that doesn't include all that social-networky horsecrap.

I use Word all day at work and hate it. I liked it best around 2000 and even the 1997 version was great. I think it's gotten worse over time. But someone else said it: it's not very buggy, and OOo/LibreOffice are, and that's a killer. I don't find myself using it anymore, but am greatful that its existence led to the ODF document standard, since Word formats are a hodgepodge.

I use instead Softmaker Office (www.softmaker.com), which I paid for. Runs on Linux and even FreeBSD plus Windows. Its file format compatibility is far better - I find it has very few problems importing and exporting Word files. And it's fast and lightweight and reminds of all the stuff that was good about Word 2000, like custom keyboard settings and macros and so on. They're running an offer at the moment where you can get it for free (it's publicity for them, since they're a small fish in the pond). Actually, just checked and I see the offer just ended.

Anyway, it's good software. For the heavy-duty stuff though (like my book www.dictatorshandbook.net) I insist on LaTeX and can't imagine using anything else. I wrote up a page on how I used LaTeX and Linux to manage the admin side of writing a book here: http://therandymon.com/content/view/236/98/

Instead of going internet free, I'd recommend you downgrade to a dialup connection. You can still do some of what you'd like to do, but you need to really think carefully about things. I wrote about my experience here: http://therandymon.com/content/view/188/98/ and would probably do it again. All the high bandwidth stuff I didn't really miss (no flash video? Oh noes!) although these days I'd miss skype. This way you've got minimal access if you need it, but are forced to radically downgrade your addiction.

That's about when you'll find your house is full of good books to read. Screw the downloaded wikipedia - you don't need it. Go walk the dogs and learn the guitar. (I can recommend a great website .... ha ha ha ha).

Clarke shaped my adolescence as well; at the age of 13 it was a pleasure to find a book that was so engaging and kept me up at night turning pages. I still think about Clarke when I'm at the computer working on my own writing projects. I've got the latest word processors on four platforms and 'enjoy' things like auto correct and pagination and print preview, etc. but it hasn't made me much of a better writer, and never will.

But Clarke wrote his masterpieces a generation before me, using software like Wordstar, which predates even Word Perfect and has a lot less power and a lot fewer features than, basically, the text editor pico. He seems to have liked upgrading his systems as he went, which means he certainly wasn't using Wordstar to write his most recent works, but when you think of the power and elegance of his novels you realize the hardware and software made exactly zero difference: it was the mind. A little depressing for someone banging away on a brand new x86_64 with 2G of RAM, the latest software, integrated spell checking, and a whole lot more: it's not good enough.

So what comes out instead of a masterpiece is a short article for my website about the beauty of distraction-free writing: http://therandymon.com/content/view/89/98/

Sorry for the inflammatory subject line, but I am the author of a best selling travel guidebook to Nicaragua http://www.gotonicaragua.com/. Travel guidebooks are one area that are the frequent subject of ill-fated "let's do a travel wiki" ideas that immediately turn into steaming piles of horse crap. Here's why: the crowds are stupid; many can't write, and everyone's pushing an agenda.

The reason why travel guidebooks continue to sell in the Internet age is because the Internet is a huge, unfettered mixing bowl of ignorance. People are still willing to turn to professional writers and editors to sort through all the horse crap and turn it into something concise, concrete, and helpful. I too would prefer to pay $17 for a book for my next trip to Morocco than trawl through the Internet forums trying to separate fact from fiction from propaganda.

These travel wikis come and go, but they all bear the same characteristics: huge number of Google ads, a couple of lame wiki posts that two or more prolific authors debate back and forth without conclusion, and huge chunks of background material, insight, or commentary. The masses can't produce that, and anyone who's ever participated in a corporate meeting where 7 people need to come to a conclusion about something they differ in opinion about, knows why.

There's a place for this kind of approach, but mass authoring as I've seen it done, only works if one person is the lead author and has near dictatorial privileges and the diplomacy and savvy to use that power wisely. If you let the madhouse run the party, you get a madhouse. And that's why people like me can still earn the big bucks selling travel information to a place like Nicaragua in the Internet age.

By the way, I helped introduce Linux to Nicaragua. That ought to be worth something on Slashdot! http://therandymon.com/content/view/68/98/.

Greetings. I live and work in Africa (http://therandymon.com/content/view/104/59/), so I happen to know a little something about the way things are. Frankly, I don't see the scandal in the fact that Africa doesn't have good access to the Internet, and reject this article on the grounds that (a) as usual, the story is focused on lack of infrastructure, which is not the correct focus, and (b) as usual paints a bleaker picture than neecssary.

It's true service is slower and more expensive but in the capitals and in major cities there is more than enough to go around. In Benin there is dial up service for about $15 per month plus the cost of the phone call, ADSL service in the capital for about $75 a month for 256/128, and if that's not good enough you can pay more (up to $200/month) for greater bandwidth. It's more expensive than I'd like and the service is occasionally down for service, not to mention phone line trouble, saturated networks, and so on, but that's another story. The point is, I've got Internet in the capital (Cotonou, if you care) and it's essentially satisfactory. Inland in places like Burkina Faso and Mali they've got internet connections as well, but they are more expensive and the bandwidth isn't as good, since the network goes through the coastal nations - Ghana, Togo, and Benin. The big agencies - UN, embassies, major companies working in the region - also have available satellite internet at much higher prices.

Lack of infrastructure is not the problem. Lack of a market willing to pay for the service that demands that infrastructure is, and as the market develops the infrastructure will suddenly seem like a worthwhile investment. You don't get Africans connected by building a bunch of equipment and hoping they show up. The second factor is regulation, which is clearly an area where African governments have some growing to do. To build a telecommunications sector (and make no mistake about it, if you put in cable and connections you're building the sector) you need effective government regulation. Unfortunately that has to happen from within, and no multinational company can effectively impose good government (and thus good government oversight) on a nation. The article's story about Kigali is a perfect example of this point.

In the meantime, where's the scandal? I have friends and colleagues who live in small villages inland, not in the capital. Every one of them has a hotmail/yahoo.fr/gmail account, and when they need to use the Internet they go to a cybercafe for a quick hour or two. That fits their budget and works well.

If you want to connect Africa, help educate the people so they can improve their own economic situation. They will form the basis for a stronger economic market for these services, and the system will be sustainable. Impose on these growing countries the infrastructure before they are ready to sustain it and you will just perpetuate the development myth.

Before leaving this post, I highly recommend you read White Man's Burden by William Easterly, if the idea of development interests you. After 40 years of investing in growing countries we know a lot more about it than before, and there are many lessons to be learned.

I was looking forward to this article so I could read about the interesting experiences of other PC-BSD users or Linux converts; what a disappointment. Here's a couple of points for folks who haven't used PC-BSD yet and are wondering what it's all about:

1. It's not a new kind of BSD, it's FreeBSD with a graphical installer and the KDE desktop
2. It's FreeBSD. Before you start complaining about how unfriendly you think the OS is, go learn about FreeBSD first. FreeBSD isn't about giving you a fun user experience or the latest version of software, it's about producing a rock-solid Unix OS in a well-engineered environment. That means the man pages are awesome, the choices are well explained, and the system as a coherent whole seems to be better put together than a lot of distros. You don't get a flash plugin for Firefox, you don't get the latest and greatest in drivers. It's FreeBSD.

I have gradually grown frustrated with Linux distros after floating from SUSE to Mepis to Ubuntu to Mandriva to Slackware to Dream and back to SUSE. I thought I'd give BSD a try, but was simply not clever enough to get a straight-up version of FreeBSD to install on my laptop. PC-BSD not only installed with as much ease as SUSE 9.3 (detecting all my hardware, setting up the network, the sound card, and everything else) but left me with a good looking, modern KDE desktop (early write up is here: http://therandymon.com/content/view/87/79/). Now that it's installed I can start learning about BSDs the old fashioned way - by learning with some books.

It's got some other interesting things. Its packages are intuitive and easy to use, something I wish Linux distros would adopt for userland software, leaving apt-get and equivalents for system software and power users. I was able to add Opera, my favorite browser, with no fuss and no muss.

It's lacking the driver support of a lot of Linux distros because FreeBSD has always lagged behind in the driver department, and it's not Linux it's BSD so those of you who are looking for another flashy Linux experience will be disappointed to learn it's FreeBSD and requires you to learn some new things.

Basically: if you're looking for a good Unix experience or need help installing FreeBSD on your machine, this is a great way to do it. It's a better introduction to the Unix world than most Linuxes are. It is not however just another Linux distro, and Linux users expecting that will be disappointed, as the comments in this article seem to confirm.

I confess I caught my breath when I read the blurb. Full screen keyboard? PalmOS? Instant on? Sounds great. I am a writer and have yet to find a portable writing tool more convenient and portable than a laptop and more useful than most of the PDAs on the market. This sounded like just the thing. Wrong.

I have yet to find a better tool than the Psion 5 (http://therandymon.com/content/view/86/79/), and increasingly it's my PDA as well. Where's the tool you can keep in a coat pocket, whip out, turn on, and start writing while you're waiting for a train? The Palm T|X with an external keyboard is close, the Nokia 800 with some better software gets close, but that's about it. And they both fail in comparison with the Psion 5, which is now a full ten years old.

The floundering in the PDA market these days is so loud you can actually hear the splashing.

This thing is too big to be useful to me, requires an expensive cellphone I don't want, and seems to cost an arm and a leg. And that means, I get to keep typing away on my Psion, hoping to God it doesn't break, because the market has roundly failed to produce its equal.

And that reminds me, who was on the test panel that told Palm this hunk of junk was a good idea?

Looking over the course of this Slashdot thread I'm not surprised by the now-familiar Microsoft-bashing/LaTeX/Lyx recommendation/OO.o zealotry/refusal to pay Softmaker's price. But I have been reading Slashdot now long enough to know the words to this particular song.

I bought Textmaker back in 2003 and liked it so much I also bought Planmaker, their spreadsheet (now sold together). But because I'm a (professional and prolific writer, I care a lot about my tools, and I've tried just about all of the products out there; plus, because I use Windows at work and both Linux and Macs at home, I've been exposed to a lot of word processors.

On Linux, I use Textmaker. Here's why.

Stable. I've never crashed it, even with ridiculously complicated documents

Fast. I like OO.o but on my old 555Mhz PIII it's unbearably slow to start up, and on my Mac, NeoOffice is just not fast enough, and even repainting the screen after a window stretch/shrink is ghastly. I appreciate the effort and even use the software, but it's not the first thing I reach for. On Textmaker menus are snappy, the graphics are fast, and things work as though it had been designed and built by professionals that want to make a product good enough to convince people to spend money on it.

Easy to use. That means keyboard shortcuts for everything, sensibly laid out, familiar interface, professional.

Lightweight. It's been designed to be resource friendly and is, even on my outdated hardware.

Fast enough to be a useful document previewer for your mail client so you can get a glimpse of what's in the Word docs I receive.

Basically, it's fast, reliable, and works well. Its Word doc import is much better quality than OO.o's. I gave Abiword a try but rejected it because of frequent crashes and a somewhat amateurish feel to it; Kword has never been usable for more than simple letters in my opinion and the font kerning issues make Kword printed documents ugly. OO.o is simply too slow in spite of all its other endearing qualities.

Textmaker's downside? The TML format is a mystery to me, so I don't use it. You can save to Doc format as a default, but I hate Docs. I would be thrilled if they would adopt the ODT format. It's also not as feature rich as OO.o, which is in turn not as feature rich as Word. On the Mac there are far better alternatives (I happen to love Mellel, and Apple's Pages is top-notch). And I use LaTeX for what it does best, and RTF or even plain text all other times.

But face it, GNU/Linux (and BSD more so) lacks a small, fast, good word processor. Abiword and Kword are fast but not good, and OO.o is good but not fast. For professional writers that care about their work and their tools, this is a great piece of software and I'm not alone in representing a market of GNU/Linux OSF fans that believes in freedom but is not against paying for software (SUSE, Rekall, Textmaker, Planmaker, Xandros, NoMachines) if with that software comes additional quality, reliability, or convenience. Textmaker provides all three.

Finally, the above doesn't even take into consideration the fact that its primary market isn't Linux/BSD in the first place, it's Windows users that synch docs to a PocketPC. And in that niche, it is unsurpassed and very critically acclaimed. Be glad they even make a Linux version at all, whiney slashdotters.

I agree, although frankly, Mutt is one of the things that keeps me using Linux. I really love it. This is as good a place as any to plug my Woodnotes Guide to Using Mutt, available at my website in HTML and PDF format: http://therandymon.com/content/view/42/79/

It goes into setting up SMTP as well as walking you through Mutt usage and configuration in general and is released under a creative commons license. Enjoy.

As for Pine, I don't like it as much as Mutt but still use it from time to time, particularly when I'm setting a new system, haven't gotten Mutt configured right, and want to check to see if I'm able to connect using Pine instead. It's not configurable enough to float my boat, but I would switch in a second if for some reason Mutt disappeared. I am far more productive at a non-GUI interface.

This is neat, but if I bought something like this it would be to write on, and that means the keyboard isn't good enough, the battery doesn't last long enough, and it's too heavy. We're still reinventing the wheel, poorly.

My own rather inadequate trial and comparison story here: http://therandymon.com/content/view/87/79/. I had bad luck with Desktop BSD's hardware support, which gave me trouble with a network card more than one Linux distro has choked on too, for some reason. Overall I am impressed with the BSDs and intend to keep trying them out. It's impressive from a Linux user's point of view how everything fits so well together and is so well integrated. After years of Linux' organized chaos, it's a nice change. I remain on Linux for the moment, but it's only a matter of time ...

Despite the trollish title of this post, I'm essentially an emacs fan. I am a writer, not a coder, and prefer the command line over GUI. I am the author of the Woodnotes Guide to Emacs for Writers (HTML) (PDF Version) and a bunch of books and papers..

But I find myself using emacs less and less frequently. My first complaint is getting emacs and my Linux console to work correctly with diacritical marks. I know that's a function not only of emacs but also the packagers of my distribution, plus a deplorable lack of easily-installed console fonts that contain those glyphs. But regardless of whose fault it is, this problem makes it hard for me to get my work done the way I want to.

I also need to program lots of small macros for very specific text editing features while writing a book that requires a silly markup format unique to the industry. Emacs was simply too hard to program for me to be able to implement it. Instead, I found Jedit, which easily facilitated things like switching between soft and hard wrap, keystroke macros, and some features I now find indispensable, like search and replace across all documents in a directory.

It's not that emacs doesn't or can't implement these features, it's that it doesn't do so easily. I wrote up a little page about the macros and jedit features I use most frequently. It would be extremely difficult to publish similar instructions for emacs because of the greater difficult inherent in installing, using, and sharing macros.

I still use emacs, but I use it for emailing, in conjunction with Mutt, the world's best email client. And for writing, I tend to stick to Jedit. Best of luck to emacs, which I still like, but I think for people like me the world has progressed and emacs is of limited use.

Despite the trollish title of this post, I'm essentially an emacs fan. I am a writer, not a coder, and prefer the command line over GUI. I am the author of the Woodnotes Guide to Emacs for Writers (HTML) (PDF Version) and a bunch of books and papers..

But I find myself using emacs less and less frequently. My first complaint is getting emacs and my Linux console to work correctly with diacritical marks. I know that's a function not only of emacs but also the packagers of my distribution, plus a deplorable lack of easily-installed console fonts that contain those glyphs. But regardless of whose fault it is, this problem makes it hard for me to get my work done the way I want to.

I also need to program lots of small macros for very specific text editing features while writing a book that requires a silly markup format unique to the industry. Emacs was simply too hard to program for me to be able to implement it. Instead, I found Jedit, which easily facilitated things like switching between soft and hard wrap, keystroke macros, and some features I now find indispensable, like search and replace across all documents in a directory.

It's not that emacs doesn't or can't implement these features, it's that it doesn't do so easily. I wrote up a little page about the macros and jedit features I use most frequently. It would be extremely difficult to publish similar instructions for emacs because of the greater difficult inherent in installing, using, and sharing macros.

I still use emacs, but I use it for emailing, in conjunction with Mutt, the world's best email client. And for writing, I tend to stick to Jedit. Best of luck to emacs, which I still like, but I think for people like me the world has progressed and emacs is of limited use.

Despite the trollish title of this post, I'm essentially an emacs fan. I am a writer, not a coder, and prefer the command line over GUI. I am the author of the Woodnotes Guide to Emacs for Writers (HTML) (PDF Version) and a bunch of books and papers..

But I find myself using emacs less and less frequently. My first complaint is getting emacs and my Linux console to work correctly with diacritical marks. I know that's a function not only of emacs but also the packagers of my distribution, plus a deplorable lack of easily-installed console fonts that contain those glyphs. But regardless of whose fault it is, this problem makes it hard for me to get my work done the way I want to.

I also need to program lots of small macros for very specific text editing features while writing a book that requires a silly markup format unique to the industry. Emacs was simply too hard to program for me to be able to implement it. Instead, I found Jedit, which easily facilitated things like switching between soft and hard wrap, keystroke macros, and some features I now find indispensable, like search and replace across all documents in a directory.

It's not that emacs doesn't or can't implement these features, it's that it doesn't do so easily. I wrote up a little page about the macros and jedit features I use most frequently. It would be extremely difficult to publish similar instructions for emacs because of the greater difficult inherent in installing, using, and sharing macros.

I still use emacs, but I use it for emailing, in conjunction with Mutt, the world's best email client. And for writing, I tend to stick to Jedit. Best of luck to emacs, which I still like, but I think for people like me the world has progressed and emacs is of limited use.

Despite the trollish title of this post, I'm essentially an emacs fan. I am a writer, not a coder, and prefer the command line over GUI. I am the author of the Woodnotes Guide to Emacs for Writers (HTML) (PDF Version) and a bunch of books and papers..

But I find myself using emacs less and less frequently. My first complaint is getting emacs and my Linux console to work correctly with diacritical marks. I know that's a function not only of emacs but also the packagers of my distribution, plus a deplorable lack of easily-installed console fonts that contain those glyphs. But regardless of whose fault it is, this problem makes it hard for me to get my work done the way I want to.

I also need to program lots of small macros for very specific text editing features while writing a book that requires a silly markup format unique to the industry. Emacs was simply too hard to program for me to be able to implement it. Instead, I found Jedit, which easily facilitated things like switching between soft and hard wrap, keystroke macros, and some features I now find indispensable, like search and replace across all documents in a directory.

It's not that emacs doesn't or can't implement these features, it's that it doesn't do so easily. I wrote up a little page about the macros and jedit features I use most frequently. It would be extremely difficult to publish similar instructions for emacs because of the greater difficult inherent in installing, using, and sharing macros.

I still use emacs, but I use it for emailing, in conjunction with Mutt, the world's best email client. And for writing, I tend to stick to Jedit. Best of luck to emacs, which I still like, but I think for people like me the world has progressed and emacs is of limited use.

I happen to like emacs as my text editor for text-type things like email and prose, but I use vim exclusively for editing config files. I'm an editor junky though, so I've tried just about every editor I could find out there. I love Jed because it's quicker than emacs to start up and has a nice LaTeX environment. My biggest complaint is how much work it takes to get a good console environment configured in order to write using accented characters. The combination of console, framebuffer, and text editor eccentricities drive me to a macintosh more often than not. This review seems like as a good a place as any to post a link to one of my creations, the Woodnotes Guide to Emacs for Writers, by yours truly. It covers using emacs for writing and editing text/fiction/prose, not for programming. Available in PDF at http://www.therandymon.com/papers/emacs-for-writer s.pdf (HTML version: http://www.therandymon.com/linux/woodnotes/emacswr iter/emacs-for-writers.html). A corresponding reference card (PDF) is at http://www.therandymon.com/papers/emacs-writers-ch eatsheet.pdf. Be kind - I'm on a limited bandwidth host and it's the beginning of the month.

I happen to like emacs as my text editor for text-type things like email and prose, but I use vim exclusively for editing config files. I'm an editor junky though, so I've tried just about every editor I could find out there. I love Jed because it's quicker than emacs to start up and has a nice LaTeX environment. My biggest complaint is how much work it takes to get a good console environment configured in order to write using accented characters. The combination of console, framebuffer, and text editor eccentricities drive me to a macintosh more often than not. This review seems like as a good a place as any to post a link to one of my creations, the Woodnotes Guide to Emacs for Writers, by yours truly. It covers using emacs for writing and editing text/fiction/prose, not for programming. Available in PDF at http://www.therandymon.com/papers/emacs-for-writer s.pdf (HTML version: http://www.therandymon.com/linux/woodnotes/emacswr iter/emacs-for-writers.html). A corresponding reference card (PDF) is at http://www.therandymon.com/papers/emacs-writers-ch eatsheet.pdf. Be kind - I'm on a limited bandwidth host and it's the beginning of the month.

I happen to like emacs as my text editor for text-type things like email and prose, but I use vim exclusively for editing config files. I'm an editor junky though, so I've tried just about every editor I could find out there. I love Jed because it's quicker than emacs to start up and has a nice LaTeX environment. My biggest complaint is how much work it takes to get a good console environment configured in order to write using accented characters. The combination of console, framebuffer, and text editor eccentricities drive me to a macintosh more often than not. This review seems like as a good a place as any to post a link to one of my creations, the Woodnotes Guide to Emacs for Writers, by yours truly. It covers using emacs for writing and editing text/fiction/prose, not for programming. Available in PDF at http://www.therandymon.com/papers/emacs-for-writer s.pdf (HTML version: http://www.therandymon.com/linux/woodnotes/emacswr iter/emacs-for-writers.html). A corresponding reference card (PDF) is at http://www.therandymon.com/papers/emacs-writers-ch eatsheet.pdf. Be kind - I'm on a limited bandwidth host and it's the beginning of the month.