[Info-vax] Intel proposal to simplify x86-64

[Rich Alderson]

kludge at panix.com (Scott Dorsey) writes:

> Rich Alderson  <news at alderson.users.panix.com> wrote:

>> I only know enough vi to edit the password file (using the vipw command), or in
>> the old days before autoconfiguration I could edit the Emacs configuration files
>> to install a decent editor.

> What you need to know about vi above all is that it's modal.  If you don't
> know what is going on, hit escape and it will put you back into the default
> operating mode.  The second thing you need to know is that unlike emacs, you
> cannot edit something that isn't there; the end of a line is the end of a 
> line and there is nothing past it until you add something.
> 
> Given these two pieces of information you can read the introduction to vi
> that is in the Berkeley 4.1 manual and figure out how to use vi.

That's what I mean by "enough to edit /etc/passwd or Emacs config files".  I
never remember all the "d<some character>" (other than "dd" = delete line)
commands, nor the commands to move things into another buffer in order to
insert them later.

> vi is an extension to ed... all the ed commands still work in it, but you
> also get visual editing as a side-effect.  It's a line editor with a screen
> editor added to it.  What makes it powerful is that it still has all the 
> sophisticated command line tools of the line editor.  What makes it convenient
> is that it has screen editing functions.

We ran a PDP-11/70 under Unix V7 at the museum; I was the one who managed
accounts on all the running systems, so I had to learn ed in order to modify
the password file.

I love an editor where the only error message is a single "?", and the
accompanying documentation which says that if you get an error, you can figure
out what you did wrong.

> Now, there's stuff that you can't do easily in vi, like working with columns.
> It's a terrible choice for doing ascii art.  But for text, I rather like it.
> --scott

Had I met it before 10 years of EMACS (and a couple of Emacs, as well), I might
have tackled it, but I see no need to.

-- 
Rich Alderson					  news at alderson.users.panix.com
      Audendum est, et veritas investiganda; quam etiamsi non assequamur,
	  omnino tamen proprius, quam nunc sumus, ad eam perveniemus.
									--Galen