Leo 4.9 and Robin Dunn's mission: mission accomplished

[Edward K. Ream]

On 2010/02/23 I commented about Leo 4.7 as it relates to Robin Dunn's
post,
http://groups.google.com/group/leo-editor/browse_thread/thread/4f76a0f57759aba

A few weeks ago Leo 4.9 went out the door. Imo, this version of Leo
has accomplished the mission. Leo has all the important features that
Leo's users have requested. Yes, wishlist items remain. See:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/leo-editor/+bugs

None of these wish-list items interferes in any way with Leo's day-to-
day operation. Furthermore, many of Leo's essential features moot the
need for more traditional features.

For example, Leo 4.9 adds full support for macros. Recording, saving,
editing and retrieving macros is easier in Leo than in other editors
because Leo stores macros in @macro nodes, not external files. But
few, if any, of Leo's users are likely to use macros because Leo's
@button nodes make all of Python's scripting abilities easily
available on a node-by-node or outline-wide basis.

It may be that Leo could benefit from some Emacs-like or vim-like
features, but that doesn't seem so likely. Leo has many users who
also use Emacs and vim, and they seem happy enough :-)

Finally, Leo offers features that have no counterpart at all in
editors like Emacs and vim. For example, the rst3 command converts an
outline to restructured text. See: http://webpages.charter.net/edreamleo/rstplugin3.html
Yes, one could imagine an org-mode command that does this, but the
fact is that Leo's outline orientation has given it abilities
possessed by no other editor or IDE.

I invite you to try Leo. If, after using Leo for real work, you find
you would like some new feature, then by all means ask.

Edward

Leo: http://webpages.charter.net/edreamleo/front.html