Interesting vi bug/feature (reposted)

[Gary M. Samuelson]

> Why is the net so cluttered with discussions of vi?
> 
> Vi is an archaic editor which ATT in their infinite stupidity decided
> to make the official unix editor.

I love it when people answer their own questions.  To paraphrase,
leaving out the derogatory terms, there are a lot of articles
discussing vi because there are a lot of people using vi.  Simple,
no?

> I have a workstation (Blit-like but better).  I can do  block  modes  of
> text  from one window to another.

I'm proud of you.  I have a Fortune 32:16, which has 25 lines by 80
columns of ASCII characters.  How does your wonderful workstation
help me?

> Think what would happen if I tried to
> do a block mode of text to a window where vi was being  run  in  command
> mode.  Disaster strikes!  Emacs is primitive compared to my terminal.  I
> should be able to press a key and then italic bit-maps should be put  in
> my file as the italics appear on my screen.  Likewise for other fonts or
> foreign character sets.

Think what would happen if I tried to run your bit-mapped application
on my ASCII CRT.  Talk about disaster.  Oh, your article seems to be
in ASCII as well.  Hmmm...

> To tell the truth in five-years ascii  oriented
> editors will be a bad memory.

If it is true that in five years ascii oriented editors will no longer
be in widespread use, then I'm sure that the discussions of vi will
subside.  In the meantime, the fact that we discuss the tools we have
rather than the tools we don't have ought not to bother you.

> Black holes are outta sight!

Snobbery is out of place.

Further comments on this topic to net.flame (better yet, /dev/null).

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