Re: RFC: Beginner's vim tutorial
On Fri, Jan 11, 2002 at 10:09:43PM -0600, Mark S. Reglewski wrote:
| 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.
I remember it; I've used one a couple times. But you're right, they
are before my time.
| 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.
Oh, I see. That makes sense.
| 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.
Makes sense to me.
-D
--
The remote desktop feature of Windows XP is really nice (and *novel*!).
As a Microsoft consultant can *remotely* disable the personal firewall
and control the system. We'll ignore the fact that this tampering with
the firewall is not logged, and more importantly, that the firewall
isn't restored when the clowns from Redmond are done with their job.
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