Kevin Buettner said:
> On Sep 17,  2:33pm, Mark Berkwitt wrote:
>
>> It's interesting that you should mention emacs. I just started
>> learning emacs while wondering if I should invest my time in vim
>> instead.
>
> This is a long running debate.  It can be just as inflammatory as asking
> which Linux distro is best.

No debate.  Emacs is best.

>> I have a
>> book, "GNU Emacs" 2nd ed. Oreilly 1996, based on Version 19.30 where
>> the author describes the advances and differences since the book's
>> first edition based on Version 18. Here we are at Version 21
>> suggesting I should probably toss the book and use the online and help
>> tutorials.
>
> I'm not an emacs user, but I should think that your book will still be
> useful for learning the basics.

Being an emacs power user at times, your book should be more than useful. 
I dont like some of the things in emacs21 so i regularly use emacs19
still.

FWIW: Emacs is 'heavy' for an editor, but if you want fast (as in
productivity) after you use it for a while and start making your own
functions and such you wont get any faster. :)  Its kind of like knowing
scheme and using the gimp.  Of course, if you never care to make it an
environment and just wish to 'edit' then perhaps vi or jed or the likes is
a better tool.

In all wars: desktop, distro, editor et al, they exist because there are
valid points from all ends.  In the end, try to pick the best tool for the
job you are doing.  In most cases if you arent versed any one over the
other, I would choose the one you will get the most support for.

I think I might be the only PLUG user that likes emacs, so something else
might be a good choice. :)

-Derek