On Friday, January 11, 2002 at 11:44 AM dman wrote:
On Thu, Jan 10, 2002 at 10:27:39PM -0600, Donald R. Spoon wrote:
| 2. I have always had problems at the start remembering keyboard
| commands on ANY wordprocessor / editor that I have ever tried.
| VI/VIM has been especially perplexing because I cannot determine
| the under-lying logic used in its design. This means I am
| constantly in the "help" section and reading the docs and never
| get any work done. Eventually I give up and go to something that
| I have already learned and use it. Are you aware of ANY
| documention that will give a historicaly perspective about
| VI/VIM? How did it evolve? Why was this particular set of
| commands chosen? Is there any "logic" (neumonics?) available
| to help remember important commands for the beginner? (Example:
| Wordstar's command keys were layed out in a geometric manner
| on the keyboard. Once I knew this I could usually figure out a
| command sequence and NOT have to refer to the docs/help menus
| nearly as much.)
[snip start of dman's mini-tutorial]
x Delete current character (don't know why this key, just
remember it) (same as 'dl')
Hahahahaha. You are obviously not old enough to remember the
archeological artifact called a typewriter. These mechanical devices
were used, before personal computers loaded with word processors and
text editors, to create hard-copy printed output such as letters, term
papers, and the like. The canonical overstrike character used to wipe
out errors in preliminary drafts of typewritten documents was the 'x'.
*Very* informal documents might even be distributed to recipients
without the x overstriking having been cleaned up.
The hackers who coded vi and the ex line editor upon which it is based
lived in the Cretaceous period, when dinosaurs walked the earth, and
many documents were prepared with typewriters. This is *probably* the
origin of 'x' as delete in vi and its clones. Only way to be sure is
to ask the coders themselves, of course, but I'd bet a lot on my
conjecture's being correct.
[snip end of dman's mini-tutorial]
Cordially,
Mark S. Reglewski