Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: vi (vs VMS/EDT)
Keywords: vi modeline showmode
Message-ID: <2671@auspex.auspex.com>
Date: 25 Nov 89 19:07:23 GMT
References: <1989Nov14.223604.17418@cs.eur.nl> <13836@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU> <2640@wtkatz.oakhill.UUCP> <1253@kuling.UUCP>
Reply-To: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 23

>We tried the 'vi' modeline on our SPARCstation 1 and found that the modeline
>does not work in SunOS 4.0.3.  We have many different HP9000 boxes and on all
>modern ones the HP-UX handles the modeline nicely.

I presume you by "modeline" you mean the mode line displayed by the
"showmode" command.

>So, it seems that the Sun 'vi' is broken.

No, it's not broken, it's just currently based on an older "vi" that
doesn't have "showmode".  "Fixed in 4.1".

>In fact, Sun's 'vi' is in many respects very inferior to the
>HP-UX 'vi' which supports 8 bits (national characters, displayed correctly!),
>setting of the timeout length in milliseconds, plus a few other things
>absent in Sun's 'vi'.

"Fixed in 4.1".  The 4.3BSD "vi" upon which the current SunOS "vi" is
based doesn't handle 8-bit characters and assorted other things.  The
System V Release 3.1 "vi" upon which the SunOS 4.1 "vi" will be based
does handle national characters (and displays them correctly, assuming
you have the correct font - the Sunview screen fonts should all be ISO
Latin #1 fonts), supports "showmode", and so on.