The Traditional Vi (2007) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Traditional Vi (2007)

#31

Post by wyclif » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 2:55 PM UTC

bbaron63 wrote: post #26

herodoturtle wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

28 years of vi and TIL about ZZ. Thanks friend! ^_^

ZZ is the first vi command I learned. After typing vi and only seeing a column of ~s, I asked how do I get out of this thing. Someone answered - ZZ .

Did they say "zz" or specify [capital] "ZZ"?

Re: The Traditional Vi (2007)

#32

Post by wyclif » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 3:25 PM UTC

herodoturtle wrote: post #13

senthil_rajasek wrote: post #8

A 2007 article from sourceforge.net and it's not even throwback Thursday. "Gunnar Ritter 2007-11-29"

It's been years since I heard the term "Throwback Thursday", funny that reading it here felt like a throwback in its own right ^_^

It's still very much alive.

Re: The Traditional Vi (2007)

#33

Post by sombragris » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 3:44 PM UTC

mghackerlady wrote: post #18

I wish elvis was still around. I don't want everything vim has but I like syntax highlighting and other conveniences

Is still around, at least for some values of "around".

Elvis, at its latest release (2.2.0) is a required part of Slackware, part of the A (essential system) package series. I have it installed on my system, alongside Plasma 6.7 and kernel 7.1.

Re: The Traditional Vi (2007)

#34

Post by lunar_rover » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 4:04 PM UTC

deadbabe wrote: post #28

himata4113 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lacks centering, other than that I also found it enjoyable to look at.

That’s a feature. It lets your thumb scroll comfortably in a larger blank area so the content is always in view for you. There is no reason for things to be centered, it does not aid readability.

This only works on large enough tablets. On phones the page isn't readable without a 3x zoom.

Re: The Traditional Vi (2007)

#35

Post by zamadatix » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 4:06 PM UTC

deadbabe wrote: post #30

himata4113 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a feature on a 32inch ultrawide.

Use smaller window

Use phone horizontally.

Much more practically, the best designs are the ones who don't demand of the user they be consumed in a single form across every scenario.

Re: The Traditional Vi (2007)

#36

Post by whartung » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 4:20 PM UTC

I learned vi back in the day and have never really graduated to vim.

My favorite features are the ranges on the commands (like substitute or delete), piping the buffer into the bottomless utility of the classic UNIX command line, and the . do again command.

About the only vim feature I use today is being able to navigate while entering text, but even after all this time, that is not automatic to me.

I have used syntax coloring a couple of times, I find it particularly useful for XML, especially XML with chunks of XML commented out.

Re: The Traditional Vi (2007)

#37

Post by Fwirt » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 4:49 PM UTC

I started writing a more fleshed out vi compatibility mode for TextAdept earlier this year. As someone who understood the basics after going through :vimtutor multiple times but always struggled with the more "advanced" commands, there's no better way to actually grok vi than to just try to recreate it. It's pretty amazing how much Bill Joy managed to pack in. Of course, if you're implementing POSIX vi, there are quite a few features that have aged poorly, like roff/troff macros and line-editing, but there are also quite a few commands that I had never paid attention to (like _) that have subtle behaviors that sped up my editing even more. The hardest part about becoming proficient in vi is committing commands to muscle memory so you don't habitually fall back on hjkl.

Re: The Traditional Vi (2007)

#38

Post by Joker_vD » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 5:19 PM UTC

JdeBP wrote: post #20

I was just talking about a fun and largely forgotten feature of Joy+Horton vi elsewhere. * https://mastodonapp.uk/@JdeBP/116793159030149624 You can see it here in Ritter vi on lines 83 et seq. of ex_vis.h . vi actually has three flavours of its 'open' mode, for cursor addressable video terminals, non-cursor addressable video terminals, and actual paper terminals. There's an as-yet unfilled niche for the retrocomputer…

What is open mode?

Re: The Traditional Vi (2007)

#39

Post by rav » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 5:23 PM UTC

Fwirt wrote: post #37

I started writing a more fleshed out vi compatibility mode for TextAdept earlier this year. As someone who understood the basics after going through :vimtutor multiple times but always struggled with the more "advanced" commands, there's no better way to actually grok vi than to just try to recreate it. It's pretty amazing how much Bill Joy managed to pack in. Of course, if you're implementing POSIX vi, there are qui…

> Of course, if you're implementing POSIX vi, there are quite a few features that have aged poorly, like roff/troff macros and line-editing

What do you mean by "roff/troff macros"?

EDIT: Ah, you're probably talking about the "section-wise" movements, defined in POSIX with language like "A line whose first character is a and whose second and third characters match a two-character pair in the 'sections' edit option (see ex)" - that's the first time I've stumbled upon the 'sections' and 'paragraphs' options in the Vim manual ... Very quaint!

Re: The Traditional Vi (2007)

#40

Post by sawyers » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 5:38 PM UTC

whartung wrote: post #36

I learned vi back in the day and have never really graduated to vim. My favorite features are the ranges on the commands (like substitute or delete), piping the buffer into the bottomless utility of the classic UNIX command line, and the . do again command. About the only vim feature I use today is being able to navigate while entering text, but even after all this time, that is not automatic to me. I have used synta…

Any interesting reading on the second paragraph?