Date: Sun, 18 Aug 1996 12:21:02 -0700 (PDT) From: Annelise Anderson <andrsn@andrsn.stanford.edu> To: Gary Kline <kline@tera.com> Cc: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: vi tutorial Message-ID: <Pine.BSI.3.94.960818121114.1705A-100000@andrsn.stanford.edu> In-Reply-To: <199608180723.AAA12015@athena.tera.com>
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On Sun, 18 Aug 1996, Gary Kline wrote: > According to Annelise Anderson: > > It's just not true that the arrow keys don't work in insert mode. Or > > rather, perhaps they work with some terminals/keyboards and not with > > others, which is perhaps one of the problems with a vi tutorial. > > The failure of the arrow keys in some circumstances (in which they > > generally don't work in command mode either) may be the reason for > > the many motion commands in vi. > > > > I am aware that the arrow keys sometimes cause text to be repeated; > > I used to run into this fairly often but seem to have figured out how > > to avoid it without really knowing what caused it in the first place. > > (I assume it's actually a feature :-) > > > > Yes, it may be a feature; who knows?! > > At least on all terms that I have used vi on--from the > Cray's VT102's to Suns to my PeeCee keyboard (xterm), > the arrow-keys screw things up. vi --- or strictly > speaking, in our case, Keith Bostic's nvi (new vi) -- > catches only the first byte of the arrow-key. This in > insert mode. > > I'm sure that the code could be hacked to _always_ > accept the arrow keys. In either mode. > > Solution is to remove the <EM> </EM> and to rewrite that > to say something like, ``You cannot always use the arrow > keys in insert mode.'' > > Whatcha think?? Well, that's better than saying you can't use them. (The statement that the arrow keys don't work in insert mode is repeated later, so there are two places to fix.) The arrow keys have always worked for me with FreeBSD (2.0.5 and later). I think I'm using them in the circumstances where they supposedly mess everything up. On the other hand if I telnet to a computer at Stanford running Sun OS 4.1.4, and the arrow keys produce capital letters. I believe this to be a key-binding problem but I'm not sure. There's an excellent but rather long tutorial already included with FreeBSD in /usr/share/doc/usd/12.vi as paper.ascii.gz, by William Joy and Mark Horton. It can be read with zmore. Probably a pointer to this longer document should be included. Annelisehelp
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