💾 Archived View for thrig.me › tech › vi.gmi captured on 2023-04-19 at 23:17:25. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

vi

vi is probably not for those who want a less-than-minimal editor. With that in mind,

https://thrig.me/src/vi.git

is a clone of the base OpenBSD vi that adds features that I want (or removes that which I do not want). Hacking on an old code base can also be educational, and vim (even a fairly minimal build with zero plugins) had gotten rather too sluggish for my taste (30 millisecond startup times, ouch!). Anyways, the changes to vi, in no particular order include:

the arrow keys are disabled. keep them fingers on the home row
remove support for ^@ as first input entring insert mode
remove ex_ncheck, that "more files to edit!!" thing is annoying
most :W :Q forms are automatically downcased
moved the preserve command after previous
greatly simplify the configuration file reads to one file read
... but then complicate this to load ~/.exrc.$FOO for *.c, etc
make autowrite happen in most cases. breaks POSIX compliance
remove many messages to avoid interruptions (at a cost)
add new command to put a string into a buffer (hint: @ is nifty)
rework J to better handle lisp and who puts two spaces after a period??

vi

See Also