'vi' is driving me crazy

[A. Khattri]

On Mon, 27 Dec 2004, Michael Hipp wrote:

> Thanks. But if I'm understanding what Google turned up, gvim is just a
> gui version of vim. And I'm already using vim since 'alias' shows this
>
>    alias vi='vim'

That's right - however gvim adds mouse support, menu bar, etc etc for
those people that like to waste time moving from keyboard to mouse and
back again constantly ;-)

> If vim is "improved", I'm glad I'm not using the unimproved version.

So are we. (Infinite undo, horizontal and vertical split windows, colour
highlighting, are all things that "regular" vi lacks).

> The problem with vi is not one of knowing what mode I'm in, it says so
> at the bottom.

You soon learn to hit ESCAPE after every editing operation. (Actually, if
in doubt of what mode, you can always hit ESCAPE to get back to command
mode).

> The problem is having to constantly switch modes to do
> the most basic tasks (file save, search/replace, cut/copy/paste) and my
> fingers don't know about modes, they just want to type. Having to wait
> on my eyeballs to figure out what mode we're in is just never going to work.

Its just one of those things that you learn and never think about again.

Those of us that have taken the time (a few hours) to learn it never
conciously have to think about how to use it, we just do (like driving I
suppose).

> I'm not looking for a gui editor. We have tons of those. I'm looking for
> a command-line (full screen character-cell) editor.

You can always try the less powerful (in fact, lame IMHO) nano or pico
editors.

Learning vi is useful because vi runs on almost every platform known to
man (even my PDA!) - so if I ever find myself (god forbid!) working in
Solaris or AIX, I can still get stuff done. I even have vim/gvim available
on my sole Windows box...


-- 
brain-dead adj.

 [common] Brain-damaged in the extreme.
   It tends to imply terminal design failure rather than malfunction
   or simple stupidity.  "This comm program doesn't know how to send
   a break -- how brain-dead!"