Date: Thu, 5 Sep 1996 20:37:43 -0500 (CDT) From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) To: andrsn@andrsn.stanford.edu Cc: peter@taronga.com, kline@tera.com, doc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: vi tutorial Message-ID: <199609060137.UAA20640@bonkers.taronga.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSI.3.94.960905171408.9864B-100000@andrsn.stanford.edu> from "Annelise Anderson" at Sep 5, 96 06:14:21 pm
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> There's got to be some way in every program that accepts text, whether > it's a word processor, database, or spreadsheet, to distinguish between > text to be entered into the document and text that is a command. Correct. And in VI that is to create a command that enters text into a document. Consider what happens when you type "." after inserting text, or you type "10ihi ^[". The command to repeat commands operates on the whole insertion. This explains why you don't want to move in this "insert mode". This explains why you can't "backspace past the beginning of an insert". I'm not saying this because modelessness is supposedly good, but because insert doesn't act like a "mode" (as it does in other editors I've used, for example IBM's personal editor) at all. > Is that better or worse? (I think it might be better, actually.) It's better to treat insert as a command, simply because it explains why insert acts like a command.
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