On Tue, May 10, 2005 at 02:06:30PM +0300, Shlomi Fish wrote: > Heh. It is also important to understand that hardware played part in shaping > the evolution of editors. When UNIX started, computers wrote output to line > printers on paper, (very slowly). So people created editors like ed, where > you typed a line and executed it. Then came terminals without relocated > cursor (IIRC) and so ex evolved. Once terminals where the cursor was > relocatable evolved, Bill Joy created vi to be used. > > It should also be noted that the keywords when vi was created did not have > many modifier keys that we now take for granted. They didn't have the Alts > for sure, or the F-keys and they may not have had the Ctrl modifiers either. > They did not have the Num pad much less the IBM PS/2 cursor keys and > concentrated Home/End/Insert etc. scheme.
I do not know what exact keyboard Joy used while writing vi, but my guess is that it wasn't lacking modifier keys. Rather, at the time, modifier and control keys were non-standard. There were many different keyboards with many different keys. So he decided to use the lowest common denominator. An antithesis is emacs, which some claim is an acronym for 'Escape Meta Alt Control Shift'. For a nice description of the subject, read the entry 'space-cadet keyboard' in the jargon file. -- Didi ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
