The Traditional Vi

I was just talking about a fun and largely forgotten feature of Joy+Horton vi elsewhere.

* https://mastodonapp.uk/@JdeBP/116793159030149624

You can see it here in Ritter vi on lines 83 et seq. of ex_vis.h . vi actually has three flavours of its 'open' mode, for cursor addressable video terminals, non-cursor addressable video terminals, and actual paper terminals.

There's an as-yet unfilled niche for the retrocomputeristas with genuine ADM-3s or (as someone pointed out) TI Silent 703s and suchlike to do a YouTube video showing Joy+Horton vi in its 3 open modes.

As an undergrad around 1984 I stumbled on some AT&T 3B2's in the computer lab and started to play. Knowing nothing of Unix (would have been ~ SVR3.x), I asked for help and the TA said something like "read the fine manual" as was customary. So I started off with "man something" and off we went, ending up at "man 1 vi", the glorious, pure original, none of this vim stuff...

Of course when I got onto the BSD VAX, someone set me straight and it was Emacs from there on..

I started writing a more fleshed out vi compatibility mode for TextAdept earlier this year. As someone who understood the basics after going through :vimtutor multiple times but always struggled with the more "advanced" commands, there's no better way to actually grok vi than to just try to recreate it. It's pretty amazing how much Bill Joy managed to pack in. Of course, if you're implementing POSIX vi, there are quite a few features that have aged poorly, like roff/troff macros and line-editing, but there are also quite a few commands that I had never paid attention to (like _) that have subtle behaviors that sped up my editing even more. The hardest part about becoming proficient in vi is committing commands to muscle memory so you don't habitually fall back on hjkl.

Tangentially related, I wish more websites and blogs looked like this now. It's elegant and modern but simple.

I learned vi back in the day and have never really graduated to vim.

My favorite features are the ranges on the commands (like substitute or delete), piping the buffer into the bottomless utility of the classic UNIX command line, and the . do again command.

About the only vim feature I use today is being able to navigate while entering text, but even after all this time, that is not automatic to me.

I have used syntax coloring a couple of times, I find it particularly useful for XML, especially XML with chunks of XML commented out.

A 2007 article from sourceforge.net and it's not even throwback Thursday.

"Gunnar Ritter <gunnarr@acm.org> 2007-11-29"

I wish elvis was still around. I don't want everything vim has but I like syntax highlighting and other conveniences

vim with mouse frustrates the hell out of me.

Just give me basic vi, or a complete editor

Github mirror + some bugfixes

https://github.com/n-t-roff/heirloom-ex-vi/

:x is a vim feature, so this wouldn't support it, so you'll have to use :wq instead.

I was just talking about a fun and largely forgotten feature of Joy+Horton vi elsewhere.

* https://mastodonapp.uk/@JdeBP/116793159030149624

Fortunately, I don't have to write up an explanation of this, as Joy and Horton already did.

* https://ex-vi.sourceforge.net/viin/paper-7.html#section53

It's basically the answer to the question of how one does vi-like visual editing when the cursor cannot be moved to arbitrary locations on the terminal, or sometimes cannot even be moved upwards.

Amusing factoid: It's actually sort of the other way around. open mode was added to ex before visual mode was. visual mode is the answer to the question of how you can take advantage of an ability to move the cursor around arbitrarily.

* https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/learning-the-vi/1565924...

VIM and STEVIE never implemented it. VIM makes :open do the same as :visual . nvi and nvi2 issue a 'not implemented' error for the :open nex command. Watcom vi does not even have :open . Nor do NeoVIM, nextvi, neatvi, and viless.

Mortice Kern vi has open mode. So does elvis version 2.

I learned vi back in the day and have never really graduated to vim.

My favorite features are the ranges on the commands (like substitute or delete), piping the buffer into the bottomless utility of the classic UNIX command line, and the . do again command.

About the only vim feature I use today is being able to navigate while entering text, but even after all this time, that is not automatic to me.

I have used syntax coloring a couple of times, I find it particularly useful for XML, especially XML with chunks of XML commented out.

Any interesting reading on the second paragraph?

Of course when I got onto the BSD VAX, someone set me straight and it was Emacs from there on..

Github mirror + some bugfixes

https://github.com/n-t-roff/heirloom-ex-vi/

A 2007 article from sourceforge.net and it's not even throwback Thursday.

"Gunnar Ritter <gunnarr@acm.org> 2007-11-29"

It's been years since I heard the term "Throwback Thursday", funny that reading it here felt like a throwback in its own right ^_^

vim with mouse frustrates the hell out of me.

Just give me basic vi, or a complete editor

Tangentially related, I wish more websites and blogs looked like this now. It's elegant and modern but simple.

> Of course, if you're implementing POSIX vi, there are quite a few features that have aged poorly, like roff/troff macros and line-editing

What do you mean by "roff/troff macros"?

EDIT: Ah, you're probably talking about the "section-wise" movements, defined in POSIX with language like "A line whose first character is a <period> and whose second and third characters match a two-character pair in the 'sections' edit option (see ex)" - that's the first time I've stumbled upon the 'sections' and 'paragraphs' options in the Vim manual ... Very quaint!

I wish it took up more than 640 pixels on the left of my 1920 pixel screen. I changed the CSS of the body to be 900pt instead of 480, and it renders at 1200px wide, which looks a lot nicer to my eyes. Didn't bother trying to center it though, which would have improved it even more

Lacks centering, other than that I also found it enjoyable to look at.

To me, the justified text makes it an effortful read.

Breaks Firefox's reader mode.

Looks like dog shit on mobile.

I agree that this general style is good, just without some of this page's fuckups.

I wish elvis was still around. I don't want everything vim has but I like syntax highlighting and other conveniences

Is still around, at least for some values of "around".

Elvis, at its latest release (2.2.0) is a required part of Slackware, part of the A (essential system) package series. I have it installed on my system, alongside Plasma 6.7 and kernel 7.1.

:x is a vim feature, so this wouldn't support it, so you'll have to use :wq instead.

Incorrect.

:x is a vi feature, that was introduced by Mary Ann Horton to actual Joy+Horton vi in February 1980.

* https://code.illumos.org/plugins/gitiles/illumos-gate/+/refs...

Ritter's vi is derived from Joy+Horton vi. Illumos has the original.

or ZZ to save and exit

Fortunately, I don't have to write up an explanation of this, as Joy and Horton already did.

* https://ex-vi.sourceforge.net/viin/paper-7.html#section53

It's basically the answer to the question of how one does vi-like visual editing when the cursor cannot be moved to arbitrary locations on the terminal, or sometimes cannot even be moved upwards.

* https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/learning-the-vi/1565924...

Mortice Kern vi has open mode. So does elvis version 2.

Any interesting reading on the second paragraph?

It's been years since I heard the term "Throwback Thursday", funny that reading it here felt like a throwback in its own right ^_^

It's still very much alive.

> Of course, if you're implementing POSIX vi, there are quite a few features that have aged poorly, like roff/troff macros and line-editing

What do you mean by "roff/troff macros"?

Is still around, at least for some values of "around".

Elvis, at its latest release (2.2.0) is a required part of Slackware, part of the A (essential system) package series. I have it installed on my system, alongside Plasma 6.7 and kernel 7.1.

or ZZ to save and exit

28 years of vi and TIL about ZZ.

Thanks friend! ^_^

Repeat ZZ to save & exit if there are more files to edit

ZQ - discard & exit

Incorrect.

:x is a vi feature, that was introduced by Mary Ann Horton to actual Joy+Horton vi in February 1980.

* https://code.illumos.org/plugins/gitiles/illumos-gate/+/refs...

Ritter's vi is derived from Joy+Horton vi. Illumos has the original.

To me, the justified text makes it an effortful read.

Yup, I hope every one agrees to leave proper justified text to LaTeX/ConTeXt/Typst/<your_favorite_typesetting_software>, doing such thing for HTML is still ugly and makes things harder to read

Lacks centering, other than that I also found it enjoyable to look at.

That’s a feature. It lets your thumb scroll comfortably in a larger blank area so the content is always in view for you. There is no reason for things to be centered, it does not aid readability.

Breaks Firefox's reader mode.

Looks like dog shit on mobile.

I agree that this general style is good, just without some of this page's fuckups.

Chrome's too, but why? It's just plain HTML.

It's still very much alive.

Repeat ZZ to save & exit if there are more files to edit

ZQ - discard & exit

28 years of vi and TIL about ZZ.

Thanks friend! ^_^

ZZ is the first vi command I learned. After typing vi and only seeing a column of ~s, I asked how do I get out of this thing. Someone answered - ZZ.

I just learnt it the other day, as well. Granted, it was from chapter 1 of "Learning the vi and vim Text Editors" but shhh

Yup, I hope every one agrees to leave proper justified text to LaTeX/ConTeXt/Typst/<your_favorite_typesetting_software>, doing such thing for HTML is still ugly and makes things harder to read

That’s a feature. It lets your thumb scroll comfortably in a larger blank area so the content is always in view for you. There is no reason for things to be centered, it does not aid readability.

This only works on large enough tablets. On phones the page isn't readable without a 3x zoom.

Not a feature on a 32inch ultrawide.

Chrome's too, but why? It's just plain HTML.

Mobile browsers are assuming you're looking at a legacy page optimized for desktops (widescreen) and have a relatively large virtual screen size by default. They expect you to manually zoom in as necessary. Adding this helps:

  <meta name="viewport" content="width=640, initial-scale=1">

This matches the max-width specified by the CSS. However, a smaller viewport width might be appropriate to increase the text size on mobile.

Safari reader mode on mobile works great. But then again, this is a site where you should not need it.

I just learnt it the other day, as well. Granted, it was from chapter 1 of "Learning the vi and vim Text Editors" but shhh

ZZ is the first vi command I learned. After typing vi and only seeing a column of ~s, I asked how do I get out of this thing. Someone answered - ZZ.

Did they say "zz" or specify [capital] "ZZ"?

This only works on large enough tablets. On phones the page isn't readable without a 3x zoom.

Not a feature on a 32inch ultrawide.

Safari reader mode on mobile works great. But then again, this is a site where you should not need it.

  <meta name="viewport" content="width=640, initial-scale=1">

This matches the max-width specified by the CSS. However, a smaller viewport width might be appropriate to increase the text size on mobile.

Did they say "zz" or specify [capital] "ZZ"?

Use phone horizontally.

Much more practically, the best designs are the ones who don't demand of the user they be consumed in a single form across every scenario.

Use phone horizontally.

Much more practically, the best designs are the ones who don't demand of the user they be consumed in a single form across every scenario.

The Traditional Vi

Source Code for Modern Unix Systems

The vi editor is one of the most common text editors on Unix. It was developed starting around 1976 by Bill Joy at UCB, who was tired of the ed editor. But since he used ed as a code base, access to the original sources has required a commercial Unix Source Code License for more than twenty years. In January 2002, Caldera was so kind to remove usage restrictions to the Ancient Unix Code by a BSD-style license (see the announcement at Slashdot) and thus vi is now finally free.

Compared to most of its many clones, the traditional vi is a rather small program (the binary size is approximately 160 kBytes on i386) just with its extremely powerful editing interface, but lacking fancy features like multiple undo, multiple screens, or syntax highlighting.

This port of vi has generally preserved the original style, terminal control, and feature set. It adds support for international character sets, including multibyte encodings such as UTF-8, and some minor enhancements that were not present in BSD vi 3.7, but had been included in later vi versions for System V or in POSIX.2.

Download the source code

Release 050325 (current)

New releases of this project are announced on freshmeat.net. You can use their subscription service to get an email when a new version is available.

All releases

Browse the CVS repository

The most recent results of development are sometimes made available in the public CVS repository. Use

$ cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@ex-vi.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ex-vi login CVS password: $ cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@ex-vi.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ex-vi co ex-vi

to retrieve a copy. Follow these instructions for more information. If you want to report a problem, please look at the Changes file in CVS to see if it has already been resolved, and if so, try if the fix works for you. Do not use the code from CVS unless you have a special reason to do so. It may be incorrect, not well tested, and might not even compile. Also note that the libuxre subdirectory and the regexp.h include file are not available from CVS because their contents are maintained as part of the Heirloom Toolchest. So to build from CVS sources, copy these items from an earlier release archive.

Documentation

For installation instructions and a list of supported systems, see the README.
Changes in ex and vi is a detailed listing of all modifications in the port.
An Introduction to Display Editing with Vi is both a tutorial and a source of knowledge for more advanced users. This edition contains some annotations for changes in the port. It is also available as a complete archive for offline reading.
The manual page ex(1) provides reference documentation for the basic concepts of the editor, addressing lines, ex commands (prefixed by a ':' in visual mode), regular expressions and substitutions, and configuration options.
The manual page vi(1) describes the command characters in visual mode.

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Gunnar Ritter <gunnarr@acm.org> 2007-11-29

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The Traditional Vi

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