Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!pasteur!agate!bionet!apple!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!att!ihopa!ihnp4!edsel!sjs1
From: sjs1@edsel.UUCP (S Starr)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: vi for the Mac
Message-ID: <442@edsel.UUCP>
Date: 19 Oct 88 17:33:24 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Liberty Corner
Lines: 41

A few weeks ago I had the temerity to ask whether "vi" was available on
the Mac. Just when I had begun to despair of helpful responses (I'm not
counting some early snotty and condescending replies of Mac devotees who
were bemused, perplexed, and/or insulted at the very NOTION of vi on a
Mac), comp.sys.mac became inexplicably unavailable on my UNIX host. So
I've been away from the correspondence for a while, and have just been
catching up. The quality of replies has definitely improved. Also,
I no longer feel like a leper; there are clearly others who'd appreciate
something like vi on the Mac.

Quite a few of the correspondents wonder what vi could possibly offer 
that a good Mac (windows, menus, mice) editor doesn't. Here is what I 
wanted in the first place.

1. Moded (yes, moded!) editing. Emacs users aside, human factors studies
   have been done that show little difference in speed of learning or 
   speed of editing (once learned) between vi (moded) and emacs 
   (modeless) editors. To a large extent, you like what you learned
   first, and I happened to learn vi. But the reason I chose to learn
   vi instead of emacs was that it suited my style of composition;
   I spend a while writing, and then I spend a while changing what
   I wrote. Also, I found vi's command mnemonics to be easier to
   remember than emacs's (really, there's no need whatever to reply
   to that opinion).
2. Non-mouse editing. I have no doubt at all that I can navigate
   and modify a screen much more deftly than can most mouse user with 
   vi's easily accessible cursor movement and pattern matching commands.
   Maybe I'm just a great typist; I don't know. But I don't need to
   take my hands off the keyboard to navigate with vi, and I rarely
   have to even chord-key; it's a convenience I appreciate.
3. Pattern matching and (with underlying "ex") global modification
   capabilities.
4. I was sure hoping that any vi-like editor that ran on a Mac
	would also have some mouse-driven capabilities (cut and paste,
	at least), perhaps menus, perhaps multiple windows. I wasn't
	aware that these were entirely incompatible with the other features.
	Are they, really?

Steven Starr
AT&T Bell Laboratories
184 Liberty Corner Road
Warren, NJ