9fans archive / 2001 / 08 / 334 /    prev next

From: David Lukes <davel@luc...>
Subject: Re: [9fans] User Interface
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2001 14:04:21 +0100

(Yes, I know this is OT,
 but there's a serious underlying point.)

> the implementation of ~ was to peek at the character you're sitting
> on and then push back on input:
> 
>     rCl
> 
> where C is the character in the other case.  the count gets lost due
> to the 'loop' and the pushback iirc.

It's worse than that, Jim:
in later versions they hacked in a fixed length local buffer and ...
(you can guess the rest).

The serious point is that editors shouldn't do stuff like translation:
that's much better left to specialised external utilities and
smooth interfaces to use them from the editor.

Cheers,
	Dave.