Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2011 12:11:18 +0100 From: Bernd Walter <ticso@cicely7.cicely.de> To: Zhihao Yuan <lichray@gmail.com> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, Pan Tsu <inyaoo@gmail.com>, Arnaud Lacombe <lacombar@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [GSoC] About the idea: Unicode support in vi Message-ID: <20110324111118.GF65750@cicely7.cicely.de> In-Reply-To: <AANLkTinuQG2ew4R81861Ei7Czds0pGVFaD4ExheFpnnE@mail.gmail.com> References: <AANLkTintkKzW=o%2B7Q53aMSpA1mmqC7aDF1wN8zHY_Wc%2B@mail.gmail.com> <86mxkm1erm.fsf@gmail.com> <AANLkTin3Wki6bnriNgWUy5JC68MDMVc4Y444tGWcKBQ7@mail.gmail.com> <86aaglx1ow.fsf@gmail.com> <AANLkTikLbU--J2aVa00tzxWb9GAvjfGnUGovwYaXXqhp@mail.gmail.com> <AANLkTimKzTrLA%2BW4a73D=aS8fy9npeqvrS8Ua3oNKrjf@mail.gmail.com> <AANLkTin=Y-z-Rt0cnd3MRg0JoSWJmhC3Uh2b32Bosgfi@mail.gmail.com> <AANLkTimDnA6jdj-MR7J2EGAQFn=%2BRrS9h32N5UWkaDUs@mail.gmail.com> <AANLkTinuQG2ew4R81861Ei7Czds0pGVFaD4ExheFpnnE@mail.gmail.com>
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On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 08:20:07PM -0500, Zhihao Yuan wrote: > On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 7:26 PM, Arnaud Lacombe <lacombar@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi, > > > > On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 7:32 PM, Zhihao Yuan <lichray@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Among *all* the GNU/Linux distributions I used, they include a vim > >> compiled in tiny mode (ln -s it to vi), which doubles the size of nvi, > >> in their base systems. A vim.tiny contains much more features compared > >> with nvi, but it's not compatible with POSIX vi. > >> > > Let's compare the comparable, I don't really care if PCbsd ship vim as > > its default, but FreeBSD as the base is not only aimed at desktop > > specifically. So you should take into account that I may want to run > > FreeBSD on an adm5120 board with 32MB of RAM, without having a text > > editor consuming too much disk-space/ram. > > > > - Arnaud > > > > If you really want to use vi in a 32MB mem environment, the ex-vi may > make sense. It consumes 1600KB memory while nvi consumes 2000KB. Note > that the ee editor uses same amount memory as ex-vi. If you really want to save memory - RAM and filesystem - in such a reduced way, then you need something else. /bin/sh without history, reduced termcap, sparsed rc.d and you should also consider static linked crunchgen binaries. This has nothing to do with any other typical installation. Also Linux doesn't do this - there are Linux distributions using bloated featured binaries and there are tiny distributions with low footprint tools such as busybox. > So basically, if no one disagree that we can drop the infinite undo, > multiple buffer, multiple window and some other potential missing > features, we can replace the nvi in the base system with ex-vi. Of course people will disagree. The thread is about adding unicode support this means they want to stay with the features of our current editor. I like the window feature of nvi, but I don't really need it for the system editor, but having Unicode support would be a big win and multiple undo is very valueable for a system editor. Of course this isn't one of the must have features on a memory constrained box, but only because you have a higher pressure. It is true that you can easily add your favourite editor from ports, but it is also true that I often get phone calls to help them with their systems and in this case you want a useable editor, which is just there for sure. If a machine isn't online, e.g. because of a trashed filesystem you can't install a random editor and must live with what's there to fix the situation. And yes - I also often use ed in many crashed situations, because it is easier to fix e.g. an fstab with ed and reboot than to setup your terminal environment. -- B.Walter <bernd@bwct.de> http://www.bwct.de Modbus/TCP Ethernet I/O Baugruppen, ARM basierte FreeBSD Rechner uvm.
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