Fernando Roca wrote: > So, lets resume, your point of removing vi its that vi has counterintuitive > shortcuts that "people new to linux" find difficult to learn and they dont > need vi because they can edit 2 lines of fstab with other text editor, well > I can agree with vi being weird for guys who use wintel OS (guys who likes > to use something similar to notepad, this is the real reason for text > editors like nano), but again , saying vi is weird is just an opinion you > have based on your prejudices .
For the record, I didn't say vi should be removed from the exam. I said that vi should be downgraded in LPIC-1 to a weight-1 objective covering only very basic commands (it is now a weight-3 objective). I taught Linux system administration classes for 15 years and to the best of my recollection I didn't ever find anybody who was new to vi and liked it. Most people in my classes were annoyed and frustrated with vi, and in the end preferred other editors such as nano. The only people who were happy with vi were people who had been using it for ages already. The problem with vi isn't “shortcuts” (exactly what would vi's commands be shortcuts for, anyway?) – it's having to get used to the fact that, unlike virtually all other text editors people today are likely to have encountered, vi differentiates between a “movement/command mode”, a “text input mode”, and a “long-command” mode. In that sense, vi *is* weird, and that is not an opinion or a prejudice, it is a statistical observation. By now, vi is an outlier. Modes like vi's, even though in the 1970s they were an obvious solution to the restricted-keyboard problem, are very much something that, for the last 30+ years of UI design or so, we've been trying to avoid as much as we can because they make software harder to deal with. (One of the nicer features of vim is that it actually tells you whether you're in insert mode, which the original vi doesn't. With vi, it is easy to lose track of what mode you're in, and that can lead to problems when you type stuff as if you were in insert mode but in fact are in command mode.) It is undoubtedly possible to get accustomed to vi to a point where one is comfortable using it for everything including large documents but these days the big question is why would one even bother? It is not a bad thing for people who are new to Linux not to have to spend considerable time on a program that is both counterintuitive and tricky to use and made out to be absolutely indispensable – Linux is complicated enough for newbies as it is, even without vi. In fact there are various editors around that are easier to operate (for people with experience of other 21st century editors – and why shouldn't that experience be leveraged?) and as powerful (or more so) as vi. We should give up our fixation on vi as the One True Editor and firmly put it in its place as a tool that is sometimes useful in certain circumstances, like editing a few lines in a configuration file as root. It's a bit like awk in that respect: awk has existed for a long time and is always around on Linux/Unix systems; it can do lots of interesting and powerful things, some of which are very inconvenient or impossible to do with simpler tools; it is tricky and obtuse in endearing ways that can be explained by history; most people use it in a very basic fashion when they have to; and there are dedicated awk fans who think nobody really needs anything else, when other folks would probably prefer Perl, Python, or whatever the fashionable language of the month is now. In effect, awk has exactly the same justification to be on the LPIC-1 exam as vi, except that the awk lobby isn't as vocal as the vi lobby, so it isn't. Anselm -- Anselm Lingnau … Linup Front GmbH (MAX21) … Linux- & Open-Source-Schulungen anselm.ling...@linupfront.de, +49(0)6151-9067-0, Fax -299, www.linupfront.de Robert-Koch-Str. 9, 64331 Weiterstadt Post: Postf. 100121, 64201 Darmstadt DE Sitz: Weiterstadt (AG Darmstadt, HRB7705) Geschf: Oliver Michel, Nils Manegold _______________________________________________ lpi-discuss mailing list lpi-discuss@lpi.org http://list.lpi.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lpi-discuss
