Hello Ben - At 11:28 PM 2/25/03 -0000, you wrote: >> There is no reason why anyone would've even _written_ vi much less >> use it for anything. > >*grin* Actually, it was written to add the visual stuff to the existing ex >editor (or was it ed? No, I think ex; ed didn't even have a prompt). That's >why the commands are cryptic; those are what ex used. The cursor movement >(hjkl) are from the old terminals which had the left, up, down and right >arrows on those keys; it's all explainable, and probably made sense at the >time, especially to the sort of people who were working on Unix.
I've been involved at some level with development of many technologies that came to life since my childhood and do know some of the 'history' but not a great deal of UNIX history since it wasn't for joe average until MINIX came along (or possible Radio Shack's contract to sell OS9?). XENIX was never 'cheap' AFAIK. I am able to use my imagination and make the necessary leap of faith that there were reasons for the keystrokes used. I had similar negative feelings about WordStar and all those 'K' key combinations at one time. Still think it's weird but have learned enough to get by. It's just time consuming to add qualifiers that I know there were reasons but I hate the reasons? Shades of grey consume too much time and energy and don't really accomplish much of anything. ;-) >That said, I have to admit to liking vi and preferring it over any other >editor I've used on Unix. I even have the cygwin and Watcom versions >installed on Windows and DOS machines. I've tried to like vi, really I have. I've had various versions here and tried to use them but never suceeded in feeling I was being productive at anything _but_ learning keystrokes. I asked some UNIX pros once and most said that ELVIS for DOS was the closest to what they had at work and was what they used at home. I downloaded ELVIS for DOS, saw the size of it all and never installed it. Possibly one day when I have a Linux only box and it's "in my face" I will get the hang of it. Maybe not? Charles.Angelich "DOS Ghost" Tech Website : http://www.undercoverdesign.com/dosghost/ Music,Photos,Stories,etc. Website : http://www.undercoverdesign.com/dosghost/faf/ Default Browser HomePage : http://www.undercoverdesign.com/dosghost/homepage.asp To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. More info can be found at; http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html
