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From: kirkenda@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Steve Kirkendall)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: A Standard 'vi' (if such a thing exists)
Message-ID: <764@pdxgate.UUCP>
Date: 26 Nov 90 18:46:40 GMT
References: <11855@sybase.sybase.com>
Sender: news@pdxgate.UUCP
Reply-To: kirkenda@eecs.UUCP (Steve Kirkendall)
Organization: Portland State University, Portland, OR
Lines: 20

In article <11855@sybase.sybase.com> forrest@sybase.com writes:
>I'm yet another person who has toyed with the idea of writing
>a version of vi/ex. One thing that has me worried is the variations
>among the versions of 'vi'. These days there's no way to say what
>a true 'vi' should do. What's a mother to do? Do we need an ANSI
>committee? Does what comes out of Berkeley defined 'vi' ipso facto?
>Do we need Gnuvi?

Elvis is being distributed with GNU.  It isn't part of GNU, officially,
but it is being distributed with true GNU software as a convenience to
GNU users.

When RMS asked me for permission to distribute Elvis, he also promised to
send me a copy of the POSIX specification for ex/vi.  I never received it.
I presume this is because the spec hasn't escaped from the committee yet,
or something like that.  (Actually, I was surprised to hear that a committee
would even try to arrive at a concensus on the behaviour of something as
big and quirky as ex/vi.)
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Steve Kirkendall     kirkenda@cs.pdx.edu      Grad student at Portland State U.