'vi' is driving me crazy

[Net Llama!]

On 12/27/2004 03:57 PM, Bill Campbell wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 27, 2004, Roger Oberholtzer wrote:
> 
>>On Mon, 2004-12-27 at 11:27 -0800, Net Llama! wrote:
>>
>>>On 12/27/2004 07:44 AM, A. Khattri wrote:
>>>
>>>>On Mon, 27 Dec 2004, Roger Oberholtzer wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>'vi' was written long before the 'standards'. 'vi' has a theory that
>>>>>since all things you may want to do cannot be assigned to an obvious
>>>>>key, then all keys are by design not related to what they do.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>That's not quite true - some keys ("Y" to "yank a line" and "D" to delete
>>>>a line) are obviously related to the operation they perform.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>Sorry, but i've never heard anyone use the expression 'yank a line' to 
>>>perform the operation that hitting Y accomplishes.  D is about the only 
>>>key that seems to have a logical correspondance with its operation, and 
>>>i'm convinced that was a fluke, based on all the other utterly 
>>>unintuitive vi operators.
>>
>>I wish I could find the interview with the original vi authors. That is
>>where I learned about the random assignment of keys. From a
>>psychological POV (and I am an experimental psychologist by training -
>>human factors, to be precise) it is fine if there is no pattern to the
>>key assignments. The problem starts when the pattern is inconsistent or
>>incomplete. Most all the GUI handbooks are written by folk that just
>>repeat what they have heard. They seldom look to the original source.
>>Which, I must say, is more the US military then some IT company with a
>>product. (Long day here...)
> 
> 
> The command mode cursor keys, h, j, k, l, for left, down, up, right, were
> selected because they were easy to press without moving fingers from the
> home keys.  When I first learned vi on a Radio Shack Model 16 running
> Xenix, the arrow keys didn't work in vi, and it was years before I
> discovered that they would work.  I still use the letter keys for cursor

arrows still don't work on most other unixes (like Solaris).

> movement as I don't have to move my hands to reach the arrow keys.
> 
> Other cursor motion keys in command mode that are somewhat mnemonic:
>                 H    Top of screen (High)
>                 M    Middle of screen.
>                 L    Bottom of screen (Low).
>                 G    Bottom of Document (Go)
>                 1G   Go to top of document (cheat two keys)

1G ??  Anyone considering that to be intuitive, logical or mnemonic has 
been using vi for way too long.

I use vi because its less perverse than emacs and is ubiquitous.


-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
L. Friedman                       	       netllama at linux-sxs.org
Linux Step-by-step & TyGeMo: 		    http://netllama.ipfox.com

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