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Originally Posted by luc-mobile
Good idea for a file that is named "New.txt". But this is not a desktop we're talking about, so it's a bad idea for a file named, say, "Interesting facts.txt". Something that 30 seconds of testing just showed over here.  |
Well, yeah - with such limited screen real estate, there's always compromises to be made. The programmer would need to brainstorm in some fashion for long named files, make it fit, etc. (maybe even a bottom status line addition?) So many ways to do it.
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Besides, what good is it to know what line you're at or how % far you're into the file if there is close to no navigation?
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I understand what you're saying, but I don't even use it that way! (and I've been using vi forever, heh) To me the status line is a visual indicator 99% of the time, not an actual aide in navigating the file. I use it to note offsets, tell how far along I am in something, determine how much more of a file is left to work on, and so forth. When you edit a lot of things that end up looking similar it's really handy just to have a visual cue of your place in space.
Example: I want to edit a file and ensure that no lines are longer than 79 chars (so as to fit in a 80char standard terminal window on a PC/Mac). The visual offset of column tells me on a screen like a BlackBerry whether or not I need to hit Enter to create a new line. It also tells me, while editing, if a long line is in fact one long line, or it's actually two lines with a line break that just so happens to come at the edge of the BB screen. With an offset indicator, I can just glance in the corner and tell where I'm at and adjust accordingly.
I spend way too much time editing in 80x24 windows.
