On Tuesday 10 May 2005 13:11, you wrote:
> On Tue, May 10, 2005, Shlomi Fish wrote about "Re: Moving to Linux":
> > NEdit is also nice. The slides covering basic vi use have been removed
> > from recent "Welcome to Linuxes" due to the fact that it seems knowing vi
> > has become less and less important. Kfir, unless X-windows is not
> > working, there is no need to instruct people how to use vi. And even in
> > console, it may be more beneficial to introduce people to joe or GNU
> > nano.
>
> Just today I saw on the newspaper that kids today don't know who Herzl was,
> or what he did. Sure, you can get by today without knowing anything about
> Herzl, but he played an important part in the history of Israel, so we
> should remember him. Similarly, vi may no longer be in "vogue", but it was
> very important in the history of Unix, so people should be taught about it
> ;)
>
There's a difference between telling people that vi exists, what its
philosophy is, etc. and teaching them how to use vi in a "Welcome to Linux"
itroducory series. Editing text is very common in UNIX, and vi is an
important part of UNIX history, but teaching people about insert mode and
command mode and the difference between :q and :q! is not something they need
to be aware of when they start. That can easily be learned afterwards.
> For even more "ancient" history, ed should be taught as well. Otherwise,
> how will the newbie understand the name of the command "grep", which comes
> from the ed idom "g/<re>/p"? ;)
Heh. It is also important to understand that hardware played part in shaping
the evolution of editors. When UNIX started, computers wrote output to line
printers on paper, (very slowly). So people created editors like ed, where
you typed a line and executed it. Then came terminals without relocated
cursor (IIRC) and so ex evolved. Once terminals where the cursor was
relocatable evolved, Bill Joy created vi to be used.
It should also be noted that the keywords when vi was created did not have
many modifier keys that we now take for granted. They didn't have the Alts
for sure, or the F-keys and they may not have had the Ctrl modifiers either.
They did not have the Num pad much less the IBM PS/2 cursor keys and
concentrated Home/End/Insert etc. scheme.
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
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