Re: X/testing crappy?

[dman <dsh8290@rit.edu>]

On Mon, Oct 29, 2001 at 08:50:18PM +0100, martin f krafft wrote:
| * dman <dsh8290@rit.edu> [2001.10.29 13:18:30-0500]:
| > Have you ever tried 'ed'?  (I haven't, but I've heard some stories)
| 
| i still use it for small edits over dialups. it's fast, it's easy
| (once you know it), and it's marvelous. *and*, it's at the heart of
| vi.

As I understand the history :

'ed' is the line editor that Ken Thompson wrote back in '69.
Bill Joy found it so hard to use that he wrote 'ex' to replace it.
Later (when cursor addressable terminals were available) Joy wrote
'vi' (visual) as a screen-based frontend to 'ex'.  I suspect you are
using 'ex' instead of 'ed'.


If I run 'ed', I get a "" prompt, and lots of question marks.
Apparently I have no clue what to do (^Z and kill to quit). 
    
If I run 'ex' I get the message "Entering Ex mode.  Type "visual" to
go to Normal mode." followed by a ":" prompt.  I still get some odd
output, so I suspect I don't know enough ex commands to be useful.

    Ok, just to verify a bit, I skimmed part of the 'ed' manpage and
    found out how to add text and quit.  Not quite as natural as 'vi'.
    'ex' is a bit better, and I see some similarities to 'ed', but
    still not totally natural.

-D