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From: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: vi for power users
Message-ID: <110188@convex.convex.com>
Date: 10 Dec 90 18:01:11 GMT
References: <110093@convex.convex.com> <1990Dec10.051430.12025@chinet.chi.il.us> <17723@neptune.inf.ethz.ch>
Sender: news@convex.com
Reply-To: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen)
Organization: CONVEX Software Development, Richardson, TX
Lines: 39

In article <17723@neptune.inf.ethz.ch> wyle@inf.ethz.ch (Mitchell Wyle) writes:
>and the fmt from uunet has BSD-isms in it, making it hard to port.  Face it,
>Tom.  If you EDIT prose, you need a fmt function in your text editor.  The
>lisp and magic stuff are not so important, especially if you don't edit
>lisp! But the lack of fmt is a glaring hole in vi.

"need" is too a strong word.  I would say "would very much like".
My fingers whip off Meta-p *really* fast, and it comes back very
nearly just as fast.  I wouldn't say we all *need* it.

On portability, the following functions need resolution after you compile
fmt.c into its fmt.o:

    abs      fclose   fopen    fputc    ishead   perror   strcpy                     
    exit     fgetc    fprintf  index    malloc   sscanf   strlen                     

I assume you know that index() is how we BSD folks pronounce strchr(), so
a -Dindex=strchr on the command line will fix that if your system is
monolingual.  The inhead() function comes from usr.bin/mail/head.c, as the
Makefile directs.   Just what other functions here are bothering you?

If you really want, I'll be glad to post a perl solution. :-)

>1.  Don't use vi to do tables; use sc(1).
>2.  If you have violated rule 1, you must resort to the regular-expression
>    stuff in the right-hand-side of a substitute (:s) command, or else bang
>    in the sed or awk script.

(Awk would seem the optimal tool for that.)

Well, I would say that tbl(1) is what you use to do tables, and that
sc(1L) is for spreadsheet calculation.  (Note the "L" part.)  But I'll
murmur general agreement here.

--tom
--
Tom Christiansen		tchrist@convex.com	convex!tchrist
"With a kernel dive, all things are possible, but it sure makes it hard
 to look at yourself in the mirror the next morning."  -me