Talk:Vi (text editor)/Archive 1

message: I am wondering if Unicode support should not be added into the main article. I believe people would be interested if vi can support Unicode or not. I am not a vi user, so I have no way to check this myself. --Saoshyant 15:11, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You'd have to say which program you're interested in. Vim can support Unicode. 207.245.124.66 15:16, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unicode 

message: I'm going to try to put a date on vi's creation. The commonly-quoted date is 1976.
In this interview, Bill Joy says "it was probably '76". He apparently started it in 1975, but lost the ex source code in 1976. He started the screen editor late in '76, while listening to election results on the radio.
O'Reilly contradicts slightly, saying the ex Pascal source code was published with BSD early in 1977. That is consistent with ex/vi being written in late 1976. But I have not found any information about when the name vi came into use. --Nate Silva 01:01, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I was there (UCB computer center staff & student) and I'm fairly sure it was '76. Visual mode in the ex editor was preceded by something called "open mode", which was the equivalent of visual mode, but only operated on one line at a time. This was due to ADM-3 terminals not having cursor addressing; only when ADM-3a terminals (fully cursor-addressable) became common in the Evans Hall terminal rooms was it possible to use visual mode. The debut of vi as /usr/pascal/vi probably happened in late '76, at least sometime after April. It was definitely before any release of BSD. I probably have this on an old 9-track tape but I don't know if it can stil be read (I doubt it). I also have printouts and notebooks (somewhere!) I know none of this is verifiable or a reliable source for Wikipedia  purposes, but I do know quite a bit about the origins of vi and especially of csh (to which I made some trivial contributions). MCB 05:29, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  vi's date of birth 

message: Is the screenshot in this article "vi" or "nvi"?  I don't think the original "vi" shows the status line at the bottom of the screen (Solaris (:version = Version SVR4.0, Solaris 2.5.0) and HP-UX (:version = HP Version $ B.11.23  Jul 15 2003 02:09:47 $) do not), whereas "nvi" (:version = Version 1.79 (10/23/96) The CSRG, University of California, Berkeley.) does.   — Lady Lysine Ikinsile 09:01, 2004 Jun 20 (UTC)
:I'll check at work tomorrow (on Solaris 8) and get a new shot if needed - David Gerard 19:45, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is the screenshot vi or nvi? 

message: The "vai" pronunciation appears to be standard usage at Sun Education in Melbourne, Australia. So I changed the entry to say 'generally' not pronounced that way. In any case, it's evident there's enough controversy around it to mention it - David Gerard 16:06, Jan 9, 2004 (UTC)
:/vi/ isn't "vai". That'd be /vaI/. I have actually heard it being pronounced /vi:/ ("vee", like the letter V in English, or like "wee" with a V ionstead of a W) and vim pronounced as /vIm/ (like "whim" with a V instead of a W) in Germany, but I would wager that this pronunciation is uncommon in English speaking countries because /vi:/ is practically indistinguishable from the letter V, which would probably be too ambiguous.— Ashmodai (talk · contribs) 16:01, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  /vi/ again 

message: Did Bill Joy or Evans Hall write it?
:Bill Joy wrote it while sitting in Evans Hall, a building at the University of California at Berkeley.
:Atlant 13:04, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Does this article contradict itself? 

message: Why is there a picture of the Vim startup screen on the vi article? The two really are different, and the picture that used to be up, which showed simply a blank screen with tildes, did a better job of portraying the minimalist nature of the editor. In fact, I do not believe that plain vi even has a startup screen.--Shutranm 18:50, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I looked through the page history (not very thoroughly) and couldn't find a page version showing regular vi, so I made my own. And you're right that there's no startup screen; I'd better go amend the caption. - mako 19:56, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Picture on main page? 

message: what is the license of vi(m)? Is it GPL? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gflores (talk • contribs) 
:nvi (and presumably the original vi) are BSD-licensed. vim is under a custom licence called the vim licence. 207.245.124.66 15:21, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Though Vim does have a seperate license, its license is GPL compatible, as noted on Comparison_of_text_editors. ~Linuxerist  E/L/T 03:09, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I can find no evidence that vi is currently or has every been licensed under the GPL or any other open source license.  Although it was originally written for BSD, AT&T's copyrights on portions of the code (see USL v. BSDi) spurred a rewrite which became the BSD-licensed nvi.  Unless someone can find evidence otherwise, it should be removed from :Category:Free text editors.  Hamitr 04:09, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The ed(1) sources that the original vi used have been available under a four-clause BSD license since 2002, when Caldera released pre-System III Unix under those terms. As mentioned in the article, the Heirloom Project has taken the vi codebase and ported it modern Unix-like OSes, released on those same terms -- although not GPL-compatible, it meeets the FSF freedoms, DFSG, etc. Thus, both the original vi and most reimplementations are available as Free Software, so vi can rightly be categorised as free. Ianking 09:00, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the clarification.  It should remain as is.  Hamitr 14:21, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  license? 

message: I think the Trivia Section material should be preserved; it's very useful. Integration into the main article is fine, but removal would discard valuable information. Where else would you verify that the keyboard upon which vi was written had no cursor keys, and indeed see a layout of the keyboard? Thanks 4.235.36.117 14:24, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removing the Trivia Section 

message: Hi,
I wanted to know the full form of vi..... 
coz all commands of unix or linux has some or the other meaning n full form so i guess vi also shud hav sm....???
i read tht vi is a visual mode of ex or something but this wasnt really answer of my question!!!!!
~20 Aug 2009 VIKI  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.72.26.243 (talk) 18:28, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Full Form Of vi  

message: Ok twice now I've tried to add the note "The correct title of this article is vi. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions." and it shows up in the preview but when I hit save it isn't there.  Anyone know why this is happening? Thanks. Wolfrock 20:38, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It is working. Note that you need javascript to have it working. -- ReyBrujo 21:20, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  lowercase title 

message: Just a reminder that instructional material, user manuals and guides, etc., belong in Wikibooks rather than here. (Please see WP:NOT.) I userfied the command guide that Hydratab inserted as User:Hydratab/vi-commands so that it can be added to Wikibooks if desired. Cheers, --MCB 17:49, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've tagged the main usage section for this. Despite the disclaimer, it's still a bit in-depth. We shouldn't have to describe how a feature is invoked. Chris Cunningham 12:53, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  This wiki page is still going to the dogs, most of the article (at this time of writing) should just be scrapped. -- 68.119.62.140 (talk) 21:50, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Instructional material removed 

message: Check http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/09/11/bill_joys_greatest_gift/, which reproduces part of a previous interview. Some data can be included here. -- ReyBrujo 16:37, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: The Register article about vi

message: Clearly someone with a dynamically assigned address in the Chinese netblock 210.77/16 wants to link to their blog about vi.  Is it possible to create a rangeblock on this specific article? -- Autopilot (talk) 17:36, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd like to WP:AGF but it is edit-warring.  I've made a request for page protection.  Msnicki (talk) 17:44, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

text: Sounds good. TEDickey (talk) 17:44, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  210.77.x.y 

message: Citing Raymond's TAOUP might at first seem a WP:RS, but reading the paragraph noted, Raymond betrays his ignorance of vi (he's a known Emacs user) by commenting that the various implementations of vi provide the same features.  Raymond is in the quote relevant to this topic regurgitating the comments from the Jargon File.  For this topic, a more suitable reference (discarding the jokes about "six") would be Arnold & Lamb, or Arnold TEDickey (talk) 08:33, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronunciation 

message: The "Vim-example.png" is noticeably not vi because of the status line.  That makes the text shown asserting that it is vi, misleading (probably the figure itself should be removed from Wikipedia) TEDickey (talk) 23:29, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: The replacement image  is suitable for this topic TEDickey (talk) 11:23, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  screenshot 

message: ``and "i" to return to insert mode''
:This phrase makes it sound as if the default mode in vi is insert mode, which it is not. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to rephrase this paragraph to avoid suggesting this—Trevor Caira 00:31, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: This has been done already - some time in the 9 years (!) since this talk page entry was written 136.186.72.46 (talk) 00:01, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  returning to insert mode 

message: Hello,
The lede of the article says the following:
:A 2009 survey of Linux Journal readers found that vi was the most widely used text editor among respondents, beating gedit, the second most widely used editor by nearly a factor of two (36% to 19%).
This seems to me highly misleading. The survey in question did not have vim as an option, and given that it's more commonly used than vi in my experience, it doesn't make sense to say that "vi was the most widely used text editor among respondents", since that number doubtlessly includes many vim users.
I tried to remove this sentence and was reverted (because it was "reported correctly", which is true, but it's still misleading). I then tried to add the caveat that the survey did not include vim as a separate option and was reverted again.
I think it should be removed or modified to point out the fact that it encompasses all vi variants. InverseHypercube (talk) 20:22, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Your recommendation, then, is to pretend that the source said something other than what it does.  If you don't have a source which says what you want it to, I suppose that must seem the right thing - to you. TEDickey (talk) 20:35, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: No, what I'm saying is that we should not include information that we know to be misleading. I suppose that you concede that the vi category includes many vim users? InverseHypercube (talk) 21:56, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

text: not necessarily: there's no control on the survey to ensure that only newbie Linux users respond.  That would be necessary to guarantee your assertion.  Knowledgeable users (particularly developers) would likely include people who use multiple platforms, e.g., the BSDs, undermining your assertion.  Without a WP:RS giving actual numbers (none has been suggested), there's no way to determine how many are using vim, per se, or (as in the vast majority of users) using pretty much just the plain vi commands.  Bear also in mind that surveys will likely be biased to report students more than the (much larger) fraction who are not. TEDickey (talk) 08:02, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Regarding ''Linux Journal'' survey 

message: *http://www.edm2.com/index.php/Rand_Editor
*http://www.rand.org/pubs/notes/N2239-1.html
*http://terminals-wiki.org/wiki/index.php/HP_2645A
*https://github.com/blakemcbride/Rand-E-Editor
*https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo
*https://www.twitter.com/enf
Xb2u7Zjzc32 (talk) 07:20, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Rand Editor

message: xvi is a very small cross platform editor which might deserve a mention. You can find it at  https://martinwguy.github.io/xvi/ and it's still maintained. 2001:985:d04c:1:a71:90ff:fe2e:dc90 (talk) 11:02, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: xvi