Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!usc!apple!olivea!orc!inews!iwarp.intel.com!gargoyle!chinet!les
From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: minimum vi command set, was: Wanted: Easy, Full-screen Editor
Message-ID: <1990Oct19.170433.1364@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 19 Oct 90 17:04:33 GMT
References: <1846@calmasd.Prime.COM> <1990Oct9.013103.18799@mthvax.cs.miami.edu> <58374@microsoft.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Organization: Chinet - Public Access UNIX
Lines: 32

In article <58374@microsoft.UUCP> nancym@microsoft.UUCP (Nancy McGough) writes:
>In article <1990Oct9.013103.18799@mthvax.cs.miami.edu> wb8foz@mthvax.cs.miami.edu (David Lesher) writes:
>>What do you REALLY need to use vi?
>>
>>	cursor keys
>>	<ESC>
>>	i		(forget a,I,A)
>>	x
>>	u		(optional)
>>	J		(maybe)
>>	ZZ
>>Sure they're LOTS of things that will go slowly with only the
>>above, but is there any text you cannot enter or edit?
>
>When I first learned vi, the only way I could get from command mode to
>input mode was with i and it drove me crazy when I wanted to input text
>after the last character on a line -- I would use i to insert before
>the last character, retype the last character, then type the new text,
>then switch to command mode and use x to delete that pesky last character
>which was no longer the last character.  My point is -- I think that
>"a" should be included in a minimal set of vi commands!

I'd teach D, A, dd, o, and O along with the set above right from the start
for a couple of reasons.  "A" is generally the peferred way to add to
the end of a line since it also moves the cursor to the right place.  If
you need to delete something that is already there, DA is worth knowing
about. Learning these will make that user aware that the upper/lower
case distinction is important (for the time they accidentally leave
caps-lock on), and hint at the power available from the other commands.

Les Mikesell
  les@chinet.chi.il.us