Mac OS X v. Linux

[Eric Dunbar]

!@#$!%!$ Reply to sender BS!!!

> | (<http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/index.shtml>).
> | NOTHING, and I mean, NOTHING that I have seen that is "Free" (as in
> | GNU) comes even close to Text Wrangler for high powered text
> | editing/processing (NOT word processing). In-built grep and a tonne of
> | other (fairly) useful features.
>
> True, I've only been using Mac OS for about ten to twelve years.  I
> have still to find an editor which is anywhere as good as emacs.
> Emacs is nice and both newbie and user-friendly, IME.  Anyhow,
> choosing your operating system based on the available set of editors
> means you are very, very picky about your editor.  Most free software
> editors run fine on multiple platforms.

I have to disagree that emacs is user-friendly without lots of
experience/training/practice. Skills learned in GIMP don't translate
to emacs whilst they do to Text Wrangler (that's the advantage of a
well designed GUI).

Part of my reason for making that statement is to wake the Linux
fan(atics) up to the fact that FLOSS is not the be-all-and-end-all of
software. It's a tool. If MS makes the best tool possible are you not
going to use it simply because you can't see the code. If you don't
and it would give you an advantage, you're a fool.

But, I don't pick my OS based on editor. I stick with Mac OS as my
primary OS b/c (a) it works, (b) it works better than Linux with the
software I use (MS Office kicks OO.org's butt and Photoshop doesn't
grind to a halt when doing the simplest of filters) and (c) it "just
works". I use Ubuntu as my play OS b/c (a) it's fun, (b) I can safely
break it not lose real work, (c) I can experiment with new software
(e.g. NVU, r... all available for OS X but I just am not willing to
risk my "real" install).