Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Vi and modeline interaction on Sun 4/330
Message-ID: <3705@auspex.auspex.com>
Date: 21 Jul 90 18:20:19 GMT
References: <8539@fibercom.COM> <1150@carol.fwi.uva.nl>
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 37

>You're running SunOS 4.1 which is becoming more and more System V comaptible.

True.

>One of the things that are changed is that vi now comes from the SVR4 
>distribution

False.  It comes from S5R3.1, not S5R4.  This was, BTW, mainly done to
get support of 8-bit character sets, not for S5 compatibility.

> SVR4 vi does not know the modeline feature.

I don't have the S5R4 source handy, but the S5R3.1 one, while it doesn't
know the "modeline" feature, does know the "modelines" feature. :-)

In other words, both Berkeley and AT&T realized that always interpreting
modelines was extremely stupid, and changed their "vi"s to

	1) not interpret modelines by default

and

	2) to have an option you had to turn on in order to have them
	   interpret modelines.

(Earlier versions of both the BSD and S5 "vi"s did understand modelines
- whether you wanted them to or not!)

Unfortunately, they chose different names for that option....

For SunOS 4.1, we changed the S5R3.1 "vi" to use "modeline" for BSD
compatibility, rather than "modelines".

The problem he's having is probably a bug somewhere.  (I don't know
whether he's running 4.1 on the other machines; if so, the problem
probably has nothing to do with the fact that it's a 4/330 and
everything to do with the fact that it's running 4.1.)