Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 06:22:33 +1000 From: "Doug Young" <dougy@gargoyle.apana.org.au> To: "David Johnson" <djohnson@acuson.com> Cc: "FreeBSD-newbies" <freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Enough is enough (emacs vs vi) Message-ID: <03c301c0ab32$2c7d5660$847e03cb@apana.org.au> References: <Pine.GSO.4.30.0103100913330.10006-100000@corten8> <00ed01c0aa0c$c386e160$0200a8c0@apana.org.au> <3AAD1D20.48F149B1@acuson.com>
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The period when VI was considered "user-friendly" was undoubtedly around the time when the CEO of IBM declared that the world market for personal computers could go as high as five units. Whether or not "old school" unix agree with the "point & click" philosophy, there is no escaping the fact that the vast majority of PC users have come from a GUI environment & therefore expect something more intuitive than arcane. There may well be reasons for using VI if one is a developer, however for someone who merely wishes to change a word or a line in some .conf file its a total overkill. At least we have "ee" & even "pico" available. ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Johnson" <djohnson@acuson.com> To: "Doug Young" <dougy@gargoyle.apana.org.au> Cc: "FreeBSD-newbies" <freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG> Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2001 5:01 AM Subject: Re: Enough is enough (emacs vs vi) > Doug Young wrote: > > > > I've always wondered why whoever it was that developed VI had to make > > it so obtuse ... > > Obtuse? Maybe I'm dating myself, but I can remember the day when vi was > considered to be very user friendly. At one time, line editors were all > there were. Even DOS had only edlin once upon a time. Compared to what > was available, vi was a breath of fresh air. > > Most terminals back then had only alphanumerics and ESC. No ALT, no > CTRL, no arrow keys. Which is why you use hjkl to move around and have > to switch between editing and command modes. If the all of the terminals > back them had Meta keys I'm sure Bill Joy (the whoever it was) would > have used them to make it simpler. > > David > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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