Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!tektronix!tekcrl!scott
From: scott@tekcrl.TEK.COM (Scott Huddleston)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: Reformatting in vi
Message-ID: <2289@tekcrl.TEK.COM>
Date: 7 Feb 88 03:00:57 GMT
References: <1988Jan19.102343.3255@nonvon.uucp> <1723@ttidca.TTI.COM> <1726@ttidca.TTI.COM> <3774@xanth.cs.odu.edu> <1806@ttidca.TTI.COM> <3099@zeus.TEK.COM>
Reply-To: scott@tekcrl.UUCP (Scott Huddleston)
Distribution: na
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton, OR.
Lines: 17

A brief comment in the interest of accuracy.

Recent discussions on this topic have mentioned vi's filter-region capability
(!<motion><cmd>, e.g. "!}fmt" to reformat region .-to-EOparagraph) and
emacs's builtin justify-paragraph (usually bound to ESC-q).  The omitted
point is that (the more powerful) emacs's also have a filter-region command
which matches vi's generality in this case.

Both vi and emacs suffer from lack of standards -- emacs from multiple emacs
versions, and vi from lack of standards in the Unix (or non-Unix) environment 
it depends on (e.g., existence of "fmt" or other filters on a given system).

P.S.- If you don't have fmt (or misspell it), "!}fmt" can be unsettling when
it replaces your text with an error message.  But panic not, ":undo" repairs
the damage.

Disclaimer: this message is not intended to plug or pan either emacs or vi.