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From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: vi for power users
Message-ID: <1990Dec10.051430.12025@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 10 Dec 90 05:14:30 GMT
References: <109909@convex.convex.com> <1990Dec08.200418.6663@chinet.chi.il.us> <110093@convex.convex.com>
Organization: Chinet - Public Access UNIX
Lines: 38

In article <110093@convex.convex.com> tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) writes:

>If you don't have fmt, it's your vendor's fault, and yours, since
>the source is available on uunet.  Get it.

Actually, I do have fmt on at least one of the machines, but I routinely
log into and edit files on many machine where I don't maintain the
programs.  Some of them don't even have compilers.  I don't mind carting
my .profile and perhaps an .exrc around, but having to install new programs
just to reformat a paragraph is a bit much.
 
>>2) How do you manipulate arbitrary rectangles of text (copy/delete/move)?

>No, that's not built-in to the program. What's the application?  If you
>just want to swap or delete fields or columns around on the same lines,
>you could easily do it from within vi itself.  (Although it might be more
>conveniently expressed using a more general-purpose tool.)  Just because
>everything is built-in to a PC program doesn't mean you should do it that
>way in UNIX.

If you don't build it in, you are going to have a heck of a time figuring
out the piece you want to manipulate in the other tool.

>The very *VERY* few times I've wanted to do something not on
>the same line, it takes me maybe 15 seconds of programming in sed, cut,
>awk, or perl does the trick.  Show me the kind of problem you mean.

It's a situation you would see in secretarial work more than programming.
You have something typed in with nice alligned columns and at the last
minute you decide to move one of the columns.  Happens all the time.
In programming, the only time you would see something like this would
be in a list that initializes an array of structs, if you had gone
to the trouble of visually alligning the elements in the first place.
In practice, I don't need this a lot myself but it is a very good reason
not to recommend vi for secretarial use.

Les Mikesell
  les@chinet.chi.il.us