Talk:Vi

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Contents 1 Unicode 2 vi's date of birth 3 Capitalisation 4 Is the screenshot vi or nvi? 5 Enormous discussion about whether vi is modal 6 Feature article? 7 Pronunciation 7.1 Some people actually do call it /vi/ 7.2 /vi/ again 7.3 SAMPA 7.4 Sourcing for pronunciation 8 Inciting the editor wars 9 Does this article contradict itself? 10 Picture on main page? 11 1991?? 12 Under the cursor vs. position specified by the cursor 13 returning to insert mode 14 license? 15 Instructional material removed 16 The Register article about vi

[edit] Unicode

I am wondering if Unicode support should not be added into the main article. I believe people would be interested if vi can support Unicode or not. I am not a vi user, so I have no way to check this myself. --Saoshyant 15:11, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

You'd have to say which program you're interested in. Vim can support Unicode. 207.245.124.66 15:16, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] vi's date of birth

I'm going to try to put a date on vi's creation. The commonly-quoted date is 1976.

In this interview, Bill Joy says "it was probably '76". He apparently started it in 1975, but lost the ex source code in 1976. He started the screen editor late in '76, while listening to election results on the radio.

O'Reilly contradicts slightly, saying the ex Pascal source code was published with BSD early in 1977. That is consistent with ex/vi being written in late 1976. But I have not found any information about when the name vi came into use. --Nate Silva 01:01, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I was there (UCB computer center staff & student) and I'm fairly sure it was '76. Visual mode in the ex editor was preceded by something called "open mode", which was the equivalent of visual mode, but only operated on one line at a time. This was due to ADM-3 terminals not having cursor addressing; only when ADM-3a terminals (fully cursor-addressable) became common in the Evans Hall terminal rooms was it possible to use visual mode. The debut of vi as /usr/pascal/vi probably happened in late '76, at least sometime after April. It was definitely before any release of BSD. I probably have this on an old 9-track tape but I don't know if it can stil be read (I doubt it). I also have printouts and notebooks (somewhere!) I know none of this is verifiable or a reliable source for Wikipedia purposes, but I do know quite a bit about the origins of vi and especially of csh (to which I made some trivial contributions). MCB 05:29, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Capitalisation

Am I the only one who feels uncomfortable with capitalizing it as "Vi" at the beginning of a sentence? Or is there a Wikipedia policy about mangling case-sensitive stuff? -- Kimiko 13:12, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

vi is one of those odd things caused by Unix: a proper name that must start with a lower-case letter. A good typographical way to get around it would be to consistently render it as <tt>vi</tt> (rendered as vi) throughout the article. - David Gerard 13:29, Mar 3, 2004 (UTC)

The classic thing to do here is to re-write the sentence so that it doesn't begin with 'vi' or whatever lowercase doo-dad (program, function call, etc.) you're talking about. --Ansible 00:36, 2004 May 26 (UTC)

vi looks weird when the monospace font doesn't look at all like the variable width font used for the rest of the text (most mono fonts don't look so good in between varwidth text). Leaving it as vi everywhere looks best imho. -- Kimiko 13:44, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Is the screenshot vi or nvi?

Is the screenshot in this article "vi" or "nvi"? I don't think the original "vi" shows the status line at the bottom of the screen (Solaris (:version = Version SVR4.0, Solaris 2.5.0) and HP-UX (:version = HP Version $ B.11.23 Jul 15 2003 02:09:47 $) do not), whereas "nvi" (:version = Version 1.79 (10/23/96) The CSRG, University of California, Berkeley.) does. — Lady Lysine Ikinsile 09:01, 2004 Jun 20 (UTC)

I'll check at work tomorrow (on Solaris 8) and get a new shot if needed - David Gerard 19:45, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Enormous discussion about whether vi is modal

Except, vi is not actually modal, or at least, that's how it was explained to me. "Don't think of vi as being modal!". It's actually a stateful filter :-). It's a very very fine distinction, but vi is based on ex, and you can actually still use it as a Filter_program! Kim Bruning 09:35, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

What, exactly, is a "modal editor", then? — Lady Lysine Ikinsile 09:36, 2004 Jun 21 (UTC)

What most people actually use vi as. vi is actually more capable than merely a modal editor would be, but most people don't see the distinction, and consequently don't make optimal use of vi. (Not that I'm so great at it :-P ) Kim Bruning 10:04, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Are you referring to ex mode? Or ex commands in vi mode? — Lady Lysine Ikinsile 10:06, 2004 Jun 21 (UTC)

It's kind of funny to be asking me that , right at the moment where I was just claiming vi isn't modal. Having noted this, the following are all valid answers:

• yes.
• it doesn't matter.
• mu.

Ah well, you left your funny-bone at home today you say? Very well, heres a slightly more serious answer.

In vi, you can do things like:

20iI am not naughty^M^[

(where ^M is return, and ^[ is escape)

I think my school teachers knew about this before I did, because for some reason they always insisted that I use handwriting for this kind of thing.

The above works because it is interpreted as a single command by vi, and not as a sequence of mode switches like some folks might expect.

I hope that gives you a bit of an idea at least, I'm a bit too sleepy to go figuring out something more decent. I hope this gives you a first inkling. If it doesn't, please forgive me, and maybe I'll type something more enlightening tomorrow. :)

Have a nice evening! Kim Bruning 20:33, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Well, actually the above would work anyway, because of the way Unix's keyboard/terminal buffering works: extraneous input is held in the buffer, and vi reads it as needed. So if you type "ifoobar^[", vi reads "i", enters insert mode, then reads "foobar" from the terminal buffer, then reads "^[". All this is handled outside of vi—it doesn't require any special code for this to work. Even if this wasn't the case (which I'd find unlikely, but who knows) the effect as observed by the user would be identical. So I don't believe there is any functional difference between a "modal editor" and what you're saying vi is, and non-functional differences are details of implementation. — Lady Lysine Ikinsile 14:41, 2004 Jun 22 (UTC)

There's 2 answers to this. I'll just do one for now: what does :

20ifoobar^[ 

do?

Try it. There's something a bit wrong there wrt assuming vi is a modal editor :-) I'm terribly sorry about not giving this my all, but for some reason I keep being either tired or have a headache when logging on to wikipedia recently. Kim Bruning 17:44, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

User-visible effect: vi types "foobar" 20 times.

What vi sees: User types "20i". Vi enters insert mode with an argument of 20. User types "foobar" then ^[. Vi types "foobar" 20 types, then leaves insert mode and enters command mode. What is not modal about this? — Lady Lysine Ikinsile 17:53, 2004 Jun 22 (UTC)

So which mode does vi enter when you typed 20? Kim Bruning 18:13, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Why would it change mode for that? "i" is a command, "20" is the argument; it's "i" that changes the mode, although the full "command" can be considered "20i", as it's one unit. — Lady Lysine Ikinsile 18:16, 2004 Jun 22 (UTC)

Okay, well vi has a repeat last command. It's '.' (a period). So does vi now repeat 20i (and leave you in 'insert mode' like you claim) , or does vi actually repeat 20ifoobar^[ . Try it and see which? Kim Bruning 18:21, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I'd like to ask you something. If vi isn't a modal editor, what is a modal editor? - David Gerard 18:23, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Please be more careful when attributing words to other. I never "claimed" that the "." command does anything, since it wasn't discussed. Now, as to what "." actually does; according to my vi manual (vi(1)), the "." command is used to "repeat [the] last change" [1]. It doesn't mention last command, although I would think describing it as "repeating the last command" is a reasonable way to describe it without leading to claims that vi "is not a modal editor". Now, rather than continuing to provide vague examples, would you like to actually describe why, in your opinion, vi is not a modal editor? — Lady Lysine Ikinsile 18:29, 2004 Jun 22 (UTC)

It's a test to show what vi actually sees as a command. We're arguing about split hairs anyway, but well, this is an encyclopedia, so I guess that's ok just this once. You postulated that 20i is a full command. The idea was to show that in fact vi sees 20ifoobar^[ as the full command.

That's interesting, because it means that vi might actually see it as a single unit. If so, we can skip asking about mode changes, since they never actually come into the picture.

Summing up, vi is an ed descendant through ex. I don't think many folks seriously see ed (UNIX) (or ex) as being a true modal editor at all. Then people look at visual mode and just assume I guess.

Kim Bruning 19:14, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

So what you're saying is that you do understand that everyone else considers it a modal editor, you just have a private definition of "modal" that says it isn't. Settled then - David Gerard 19:28, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Actually I hadn't addressed your question yet. :-) See the current article. Also see: mode under computer software. A modal editor is an editor in which the keys change their meanings depending on what mode the editor is in. Sounds a lot like vi, right? Well, not quite. Apparently vi isn't really a great example of a modal editor, based on that definition. I've heard people quite seriously explain why vi is not really modal. Somehow I've managed to maneuver myself into a position where I'm defending that side of the argument for once. :-P Kim Bruning 20:08, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Is your entire platform for calling it not modal based upon the existence of the "." command? And if so, how does that make it not modal? You can't "skip around" the mode changes in the "." command because there aren't any. "." repeats the last change—that is, the result of the last command(s). There is, obviously, no mode change involved in that, even though "20ifoo^[" involves two mode changes. — Lady Lysine Ikinsile 19:37, 2004 Jun 22 (UTC)

Hmmm, I didn't directly mention '.' again in my last argument at all. But aren't you reaching a bit? What's easier to implement, just execute a single parsed command again, or try to figure out exactly what changes happened last (when is last?) combined whith which spaghetti tangle of mode changes?

I'm not really happy with me being the one to bring forward this dissent, it's just that I have known folks who did put it forward like this. (Specifically, the fellow who taught me vi :-) ). If I can just convince you it's not quite as cut and dried as you think, and that some people have a different opinion, well, that's all I'm asking for. Kim Bruning 20:08, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Some people are also of the opinion that the earth is flat. I have yet to see any actual suggestion of why "modal" does not apply to vi, please provide one (not more "examples", please, an actual reason).

Apparently vi isn't really a great example of a modal editor, based on that definition -> why not? In what way do keys not change meaning based on the mode? (FWIW, mode doesn't say that 'keys change meaning', only that vi has 2 (3) modes.) — Lady Lysine Ikinsile 20:34, 2004 Jun 22 (UTC)

It is argued by some that vi doesn't really have modes. For some reason I'm defending that argument ;-) To try and do that, I've shown that vi has some behaviours that are not easily explained by modes. You tried to explain the example I gave, and got a bit of a spaghetti explanation, I tried it and explained in one sentance. I've also told you that vim is derived from ex, which is not a modal editor at all.

The current vi article is the article that talks about 'keys change meaning'. Also, the article points out that vim is the only vi which actually 'displays your editing mode', while all the others apparently don't. I've been told that vims' behaviour is actually considered incorrect in this respect.

Once again, I'm not the best person to defend this argument, but I'll try to do my best until/unless a better expert on this pov comes along. Kim Bruning 20:59, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Okay, well I'm really spending way too much time on this, but here goes.

Consider these 3 lines:

#1
echo -e '$_="just another crazy hacker\\n";\ns/crazy/perl/;\nprint;\n '| perl

#2
echo -e 'a\njust another perl hacker\n.\ns/perl/ex/\nw! testme'| ex && cat testme

#3
echo -e 'ajust another perl hacker\E:s/perl/vi\n:w! testme\n:q!'| vi && cat testme

They all have similar input, and equivalent output. The thing is, there's probably not many folks who would say the top 2 lines are some form of modal input.

Based on what I think is being said here, you might claim that line 3 *is* modal in some way.

Okay, that's interesting.

So did I predict right, and will you be calling the 3rd line modal? If so, why? I'm interested in hearing your arguments. :-)

Quickly answering your question "why does modal not apply to vi", well, the answer to that was right at the start of this debate: vi is actually a stateful filter.

See if you can look at it this way: vi is a special mode of ex, which takes input in a specific way, and parses it as a special case of ex commands.

Kim Bruning 08:49, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Feature article?

Although I'm not a vi user (I'm a BBEdit guy), I'm wondering if there are plans to promote this article as a feature article, considering that Emacs recently got its 5 minutes of fame. Surely we can tap into the rivalry in a good way, as opposed to the typical flame war. :-)

The vi article is nowhere near ready for being a feature article. So anyone supporting such an idea had better a cunning plan for improving the article first. Nothing to stop you from putting that plan into practice. Rl 07:54, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I actually like the brevity of the vi article in comparison to the Emacs one. Call me a sucker for the minimalism of vi. Plus this one is much more factual, to the point, and useful than that other editor. :^)

[edit] Pronunciation

[edit] Some people actually do call it /vi/

Moved from main page:

But it fairly frequently is pronounced /vi/. Shouldn't Wikipedia be descriptive rather than prescriptive?

It's like the argument about what a particular city should be called; as the people who founded it / live there, or as outsiders might call it. In this case, the originators of the program always said /V-I/, so that's the official pronounciation in my book. As an aside, if you say /vi/ or /siks/, then you'll sound like a doofus to more experience Unix users, and you wouldn't want that, now would you? -- ansible

I take it it's meant to be pronounced "V. I", like the two letters. We need to fix this:

we-aye" = /vi aI/

as the two things don't agree. See SAMPA. "V.I." is [vi: aI]. The often-used but incorrect pronunciation is (I'm guessing) like the word "vye" as in "vye for his affections": [vaI]. COuls someone with knowledge of phonetics AND this program check? -- Tarquin

---

I'm generally in favor of descriptive-rather-than-prescriptive, but as a 20-year Unix veteran, I will verify that indeed, anyone who says "vye" or "six" will be instantly tagged as a clueless newbie. It's "vee eye". In fact, it's "vee eye" even when it's "vim" :-) I'm not that familiar with SAMPA, but I'll look it up and try to fix that. --LDC

If it's "V. I" like the two letters it's [vi: aI]. I'll fix that on the subject page. -- Tarquin

[edit] /vi/ again

The "vai" pronunciation appears to be standard usage at Sun Education in Melbourne, Australia. So I changed the entry to say 'generally' not pronounced that way. In any case, it's evident there's enough controversy around it to mention it - David Gerard 16:06, Jan 9, 2004 (UTC)

/vi/ isn't "vai". That'd be /vaI/. I have actually heard it being pronounced /vi:/ ("vee", like the letter V in English, or like "wee" with a V ionstead of a W) and vim pronounced as /vIm/ (like "whim" with a V instead of a W) in Germany, but I would wager that this pronunciation is uncommon in English speaking countries because /vi:/ is practically indistinguishable from the letter V, which would probably be too ambiguous.— Ashmodai ^{(talk · contribs)} 16:01, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] SAMPA

I've converted the SAMPA to IPA (without prejudice to the debate as to hte question how it should be pronounced - by the way from my UNIX days I always remember it being called "vye" as a single word - and removed the convertIPA template. rossb 14:22, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I always remember it being called "vye" as a single word

I think that must be a regional dialect. :-) In the shops I've worked in, it's always been "vee-eye". But there is some support for your position to be found in the editors "vile" and "vim", which are definitely pronounced as words.

Atlant 17:06, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

For goodness sakes - it appears to be pronounced in one of two ways, can't we just accept that, get over it and have the article show the two options (thereby avoiding this whole silly schoolboy argument on the front page)? For the record, I call it vi. And always will do. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 147.114.226.173 (talk • contribs) .

Just so I'm clear on this (perhaps my humour detector is broken), 147.114.226.173, which pronunciation were you trying to indicate when you said "I call it vi. And always will do."

Atlant 13:20, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sourcing for pronunciation

I have cited the pronunciation to a reliable source in a footnote. While I am sure that some people pronounce it differently, Wikipedia sourcing policy would require that the alternate pronunciation be cited to a reliable source as well, and I have yet to see one cited. Plenty of people pronounce "nuclear" as "nucular", but we don't put than in a Wikipedia article either. Anecdotal assertions like "The 'vai' pronunciation appears to be standard usage at Sun Education in Melbourne, Australia" are not encyclopedic. Wikipedia is not a dictionary of regional or subcultural English, so we don't need to record various people's random mispronunciations of things. So, if you find a reliable source that gives an alternate pronunciation, feel free to add it. Otherwise, it no more belongs in the article than "nucular" does. --MCB 22:36, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Ironically, your "reliable" source also probably supports the alternative pronunciation; I don't have the printed version, but the Jargon File claims to be an online version of the said dictionary, and it gives "vi: /V I/, not, /vi:/, never, /siks/", which indicates by the variation of not and never that the second pronunciation is considered "incorrect", but since it is not "never" used, it clearly must be used.

Now, note that WP:RS is not a policy, and indeed states in bold text in the very first paragraph that it is not binding. The actual policy is WP:V, which requires only that it be possible to verify claims, not that every single claim be cited (otherwise it would be necessary to provide a reliable source for the claim that water is wet!)

In this case, it is very easy to verify the claim that some people use the alternative pronunciation: a simple Google search will return many, many instances of people arguing over the question of which is the proper pronunciation. It is consequently trivially verifiable, and a demonstrably controversial issue that it is reasonable to document on Wikipedia.

Thank you for adding a source for the claim that actually benefits from one, however (the claim that one pronunciation is considered correct, which, as a controversial issue, requires that we cite an authoritative opinion rather than stating a POV ourselves).

Incidentally, you may be interested to know that the "nucular" pronunciation actually is documented in Nuclear - as of course it should be. — Haeleth Talk 20:09, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Please don't take this the wrong way, but I confess that I'm immediately suspicious of any argument that starts with "note that WP:RS is not policy...". Even if it were not strictly applied here, can you supply any reasonably plausible source that supports the "alternative" pronunciation? I mean, something other than hearsay, folklore, personal opinion, etc.? Your reading of the Jargon File/Hacker's Dictionary (the latter is the same as the online version, yes) seems very strained; using someone's authoritative statement "A, not B, and never C" as support for the legitimacy of "B" seems very odd to me.

The so-called "alternative" pronunciation /vi:/ is simply an error, committed by people who have never heard it pronounced correctly and but see it written. It's just a trivial mistake, not worthy of encyclopedic preservation. My example of "nucular" was perhaps not a good one; "nucular" is a highly notable mispronunciation (due to having been uttered by some prominent persons), and while it does have its own article (Nucular), it would be completely out of place as an alternative pronunciation in the nuclear physics article. /vi:/, on the other hand, is a non-notable mispronunciation, and any actual use of it is limited to people who don't know better, and I strongly disagree that there is any actual controversy as to the pronunciation, nor have I seen any sources, strictly reliable or not, verifying that. Descriptive or not, I don't think Wikipedia should be in the business of preserving trivial errors that arise from ignorance. --MCB 06:50, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

It appears you have failed to realise from my edits that I use the /vaɪ/ pronunciation myself. Now that I have made this clear, I would appreciate it if you would stop characterising me as an "ignorant" person who "doesn't know better" and makes "trivial mistakes".

Now, the reason it is relevant that WP:RS is not policy is that there is no consensus as to what actually constitutes a reliable source. I suspect, for example, that you would reject any of the numerous Usenet and blog discussions on the subject as "unreliable", though I personally believe they would be perfectly adequate to demonstrate that multiple pronunciations are in common use. Meanwhile, I am not convinced that the source you have provided is authoritative: the Jargon File is not a work of scholarship based on impartial research, but rather a list of ESR's personal opinions on how "real" hackers talk. It cannot be a reliable source for the unqualified statement that "vi is pronounced /vi:.aɪ/" - at best, it is a reliable source for the statement that "Eric S. Raymond states that vi should be pronounced /vi:.aɪ/".

Still, given how strongly you feel on this point, I have done as you asked and looked for published sources that document the fact that the pronunciation /vaɪ/ is common. This was surprisingly easy. The book I have cited in the article actually claims that /vaɪ/ is the correct pronunciation, with no mention of any alternative; you may think the author "ignorant", but the question here is not whether ESR would approve, but whether the pronunciation is in common use or not. — Haeleth Talk 17:18, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

A word of advice: If you come into my shop claiming to "know" Unix, and it isn't a case of English being a foreign language to you, and you pronounce the editor's name as "vie", I'll be very suspicious of your claims of "knowing" Unix. I have never heard an experienced Unix practitioner call the editor anything other than "V I". But don't let me change your pronunciation ;-).

Maybe someone can ask Bill Joy how he pronounces it? He's a bit more-authoritative on this topic than ESR ;-).

Atlant 19:23, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Haeleth, be assured I had no idea you were among those who used what you would like to be considered a legitimate alternative pronunciation, and I certainly intended no personal attack; I assumed you were defending an abstract point. That said, this discussion is both painful and funny to me, since I was "in the room" (both literally and figuratively) when Bill Joy wrote vi in 1975-76, right there on the 2nd floor and 5th floor of Evans Hall. (As with csh and some other tools of that era, Joy had a number of informal collaborators, including students. I don't think I wrote any part of ex/vi, but I did have some code in csh dealing with directory handling). There is absolutely no question as to the correct pronunciation; vi and ex were named and pronounced in accordance with all the other two-letter fundamental UNIX utilities/apps in V6 and V7, like ls, cp, rm, cc, as, ln, m4, and so forth. All were, and are, pronounced as two-letter initialisms. Three- and four-letter commands, like cat, yacc, diff, and so forth, were pronounced as words.

It is a matter of bemusement to me that 30 years later, not only have some people invented a new pronunciation based on looking at the spelling (but being unaware or indifferent to its origin), but seem to want to defend it as somehow legitimate. Imagine for a moment that you're a French person, well-schooled in your history-steeped language, and you hear some American not only pronounce "cliché" as "clitch", but insist that it's a valid alternative pronunciation, in "common use", and ought to be cited as such in the dictionary. Wouldn't you be embarrassed for the poor American? --MCB 07:21, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Inciting the editor wars

A recent editor added (regarding vim) equivalent in power to Emacs.

Now you've done it!

To Emacs partisans, nothing is as powerful as Emacs. The fusion power of a galaxy of suns powering Sagans worth of IBM Z/OS mainframe computers couldn't rival the power of Emacs. Surely, someone will be along to blast this statement soon.

Atlant 14:50, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'll quickly change it to roughly equivalent in power to Emacs, in that way, the statement becomes mostly harmless. ;-) Kim Bruning 17:16, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well done -- thanks!

Atlant 17:27, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Alright, buster! Just WHERE does the Emacs even come close to the power of vi? - Anonymous, 12:02, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Does this article contradict itself?

Did Bill Joy or Evans Hall write it?

Bill Joy wrote it while sitting in Evans Hall, a building at the University of California at Berkeley.

Atlant 13:04, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Picture on main page?

Why is there a picture of the Vim startup screen on the vi article? The two really are different, and the picture that used to be up, which showed simply a blank screen with tildes, did a better job of portraying the minimalist nature of the editor. In fact, I do not believe that plain vi even has a startup screen.--Shutranm 18:50, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

I looked through the page history (not very thoroughly) and couldn't find a page version showing regular vi, so I made my own. And you're right that there's no startup screen; I'd better go amend the caption. - mako 19:56, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 1991??

Quoth the article:

It is still widely used by users of Unix variants (about half the respondents in a 1991 USENET poll preferred it).

Heh, heh. Surely there must be a more recent and/or accurate set of numbers out there? --Jfruh 00:17, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Ya use what propaganda ya gots, n'est pa?

Seriously, among the Unix crowd I hang around, vi (or its more-recent variants) is still very competitive as an editor.

Atlant 11:16, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Oh, I know it is. It's just that if you want to reinforce stereotypes about said crowd, I can think of now better way to do it than to use a 14-year-old Usenet poll as if it were relevant evidence :) --Jfruh 13:15, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Under the cursor vs. position specified by the cursor

From the vim docs:

["x]x                   Delete [count] characters under and after the cursor
                        [into register x] (not |linewise|).

How about "under and after the cursor"?—Trevor Caira 14:40, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I think the article ("specified by the cursor position") is perfectly clear (at least in this regard) as it stands now. I'd also accept "indicated by the cursor". But trying to identify/describe what the cursor is and how it indicates the indicated character is doomed to fail as various terminals and termulators do this in varying ways: blinking blocks, reversed text, underlined text, "I-beam insertion points", and so on...

Atlant 14:51, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

I think that phrasing is vague (i.e. before or after the cursor?). Which character is indicated by the term "under the cursor" can be explained somewhere else in the article (maybe in a neighboring phrase or sentence), but it is the standard explaination of which character the command 'x' deletes, and once you understand which character is under your i-beam/block/underline, I believe it is the appropriate explanation of this command for Wikipedia. It may be worth noting that Google has: `Results 1 - 10 of about 4,380 for vi "delete the character under the cursor".'—Trevor Caira

How about: ' "x" to delete the character under the cursor (where the position "under the cursor" may be to the right of an I-beam, over an underscore, or under a block character depending on the terminal) '—Trevor Caira 22:34, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] returning to insert mode

``and "i" to return to insert mode

This phrase makes it sound as if the default mode in vi is insert mode, which it is not. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to rephrase this paragraph to avoid suggesting this—Trevor Caira 00:31, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] license?

what is the license of vi(m)? Is it GPL? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gflores (talk • contribs).

nvi (and presumably the original vi) are BSD-licensed. vim is under a custom licence called the vim licence. 207.245.124.66 15:21, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Though Vim does have a seperate license, its license is GPL compatible, as noted on Comparison_of_text_editors. ~Linuxerist E/L/T 03:09, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

I can find no evidence that vi is currently or has every been licensed under the GPL or any other open source license. Although it was originally written for BSD, AT&T's copyrights on portions of the code (see USL v. BSDi) spurred a rewrite which became the BSD-licensed nvi. Unless someone can find evidence otherwise, it should be removed from Category:Free text editors. Hamitr 04:09, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

The ed(1) sources that the original vi used have been available under a four-clause BSD license since 2002, when Caldera released pre-System III Unix under those terms[2]. As mentioned in the article, the Heirloom Project has taken the vi codebase[3] and ported it modern Unix-like OSes, released on those same terms -- although not GPL-compatible, it meeets the FSF freedoms, DFSG, etc. Thus, both the original vi and most reimplementations are available as Free Software, so vi can rightly be categorised as free. Ianking 09:00, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. It should remain as is. Hamitr 14:21, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Instructional material removed

Just a reminder that instructional material, user manuals and guides, etc., belong in Wikibooks rather than here. (Please see WP:NOT.) I userfied the command guide that Hydratab inserted as User:Hydratab/vi-commands so that it can be added to Wikibooks if desired. Cheers, --MCB 17:49, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Register article about vi

Check http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/09/11/bill_joys_greatest_gift/, which reproduces part of a previous interview. Some data can be included here. -- ReyBrujo 16:37, 6 January 2007 (UTC)