Re: vi in Debian (slink)

[Tyson Dowd <trd@cs.mu.OZ.AU>]

On 04-Apr-1999, Hamish Moffatt <hamish@debian.org> wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 03, 1999 at 06:18:57PM -0000, Pollywog wrote:
> > vi is acting weird, and I just discovered that vi on my system is not really
> > vim.  Isn't vi really just a symlink to vim on most systems?
> > 
> > vim works well, but vi is weird.  It acts buggy. 
> 
> vi could be nvi, elvis, or vim, or another VI if we had one.
> 
> I use nvi here and I've never found it to be buggy. Most likely you're
> used to the way vim does things. nvi is much more authentic. I've never
> seen an advantage to using vim personally.

Major Advantages to using vim over nvi:
	- multiple undo
	- region select
	- recordable macros
	- :command history 
	- filename completion
	- multiple buffers/split windows
	- identifier completion (^P, ^N).
	- intelligent reformatting (Q)
	- syntax highlighting
	- good online help

I believe vim is responsible for a large productivity increase over vi,
and has further pushed back any need to learn emacs.  I haven't yet any
vi user who hasn't been converted after being shown a few major vim
conveniences.

-- 
The quantum sort: 
	while (!sorted) { do_nothing(); }
Tyson Dowd   <tyson@tyse.net>   http://tyse.net/