Re: emacs vs vs.net

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "William Shieh" <gwshieh@hotmail.com>
> Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help
> Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 18:13:43 -0800
> 
> i'm very new to email and the system i'm using most of the time is win32.
> could someone give me some example why emacs is so powerful?

Because it's infinitely customizable (that is, you can change its
default behavior in many ways that are unimaginable with other similar
software), and has lots of powerful features that allow you to do
almost anything you can think of.

> from what i could see is that it takes more key to do a simple copy
> and paste than notepad.

How so?  Emacs supports the same paradigm for copy/paste as any other
GUI program: mark the text to be copied with the mouse, then click the
mouse's right button at the destination.  Doesn't this work for you?

> can anyone give me a good reason why you use emacs instead of vs.net
> from ms?

One good reason is that Emacs is available on almost any platform out
there, not only on Windows.  Another good reason is that Emacs has
packages bundled with it that allow you to do things beyond anything
vs.net could ever have.  Like email, for example (I read your message
and am typing this response in Emacs).  Yet another good reason is
that Emacs is free software, so you can study the sources, understand
how it works much better than any docs could ever describe, and fix
any bug/misfeature without being at the mercy of the vendor.