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From: cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: UNIX needs a real text editor
Message-ID: <37110@bbn.COM>
Date: 11 Mar 89 15:31:59 GMT
References: <222@imspw6.UUCP> <9653@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <5552@brspyr1.BRS.Com> <3370@ficc.uu.net> <7324@boulder.Colorado.EDU>
Sender: news@bbn.COM
Reply-To: cosell@BBN.COM (Bernie Cosell)
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA
Lines: 34

In article <7324@boulder.Colorado.EDU> walkerb@tramp.Colorado.EDU (Brian Walker) writes:
}Actually, for all of it's clunks and clatters, vi is livable.  I wouldn't mind
}having a true full screen editor, but vi does offer the ability to work on any
}terminal for which a termcap is defined.  It's command set isn't as bad as the
}one for Emacs (as in, :wq is a lot easier to grasp than ^X^F).  And, you can
}learn to hit the dreaded [esc] key.

Actually, you hardly have to hit "escape" at all in vi.  a bit of creative use
of the "map!" command and you can have essentially ALL of your normal-editing
chars available in input-mode.  Once you do that, it stops being "input mode
versus command mode", but rather "text editing mode versus general command
mode".  You can't quite do *everything* you might like, but you can come
*awful* close.  [e.g., as I type this in input mode, my arrow keys are
"enabled", I have word-forward/backward, end-of-line, beginning-of-line, a
fistful of assorted deletes and some other junk all set up.]  I actually like
it BETTER that way: when I'm typing in running text, the *only* commands active
are those that relate directly to typing-in-running-text.  All the random ones
(save the file, copy a paragraph, etc, etc) require that (in the way I look at
things) I *do* something to "enable" all the other non-local commands.

I could do lots more with my .exrc, but bascially I added input-mode-commands
until I found that I didn't need any more and then I stopped (yes, the emacs
philosophy of "you should do everything you can" isn't the preferred operating
mode for some of us)... for example, I worked up a bunch of language-specific
command sets, for TeX, and C and Lisp and...  but mostly I didn't need them
enough so I didn't bother finishing them up.

About the only thing I really miss with vi is being about to point-at, and
mark-regions-of text with my mouse.

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