From owner-freebsd-doc Thu Sep 5 18:47:32 1996 Return-Path: owner-doc Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id SAA04822 for doc-outgoing; Thu, 5 Sep 1996 18:47:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailbox.neosoft.com (mailbox.neosoft.com [206.109.1.16]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id SAA04801 for ; Thu, 5 Sep 1996 18:47:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from bonkers.taronga.com (root@bonkers.neosoft.com [206.109.2.48]) by mailbox.neosoft.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id UAA22171; Thu, 5 Sep 1996 20:47:24 -0500 (CDT) Received: (from peter@localhost) by bonkers.taronga.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id UAA20640; Thu, 5 Sep 1996 20:37:44 -0500 From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) Message-Id: <199609060137.UAA20640@bonkers.taronga.com> Subject: Re: vi tutorial To: andrsn@andrsn.stanford.edu Date: Thu, 5 Sep 1996 20:37:43 -0500 (CDT) Cc: peter@taronga.com, kline@tera.com, doc@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: from "Annelise Anderson" at Sep 5, 96 06:14:21 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Sender: owner-doc@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > 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.