Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org> [2002-08-16 10:21:31 +0100]: > It doesn't bother me that some of the keystrokes differ, because > really it's blatantly obvious from the appearance when one is using > vim and I can adjust for this long before I hit the corner cases > where the keystrokes differ.) > > > Sorry. While that used to be true before alternatives (and vim or > > elvis or editorxyz) it is not true any longer. Now you will never be > > able to tell if you are calling vi or if you are calling something > > that is masquerading as vi through alternatives. > > Sit me in front of any of the vi alternatives I've seen and I'll tell > you which it is without having to touch the keyboard, just from what's > on the screen. Ah, but can you tell which one you will invoke *before* you invoke it? That's the rub. If you have to wait until afterward then a user would really need to know the subtle details of all of them. How do you document this to a user in a way which will not be confusing to the newbie and not tedious to the expert? How can you write a unix manual that would work across both the classic Sun, HP, IBM, AT&T, DEC, BSD systems and also work on the more modern Free Software systems as too? BTW I agree that most vi clones are "close enough for government work" as they say. While it frustrates me it should still be possible to use them mostly effectively. I was whining softly because I don't like the result. But I know we only got here because without a free version of vi years ago that a clone was needed. So I blame closed source proprietary software for all of my troubles. :-) :-) Bob
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