bradb <brad.beveridge@gmail.com> wrote:
+---------------
| Rob Warnock wrote:
| > ...using "nvi-1.79" .... prefer it to Vim...
|
| If it's not too off topic, would you mind saying why you prefer nvi?
| I've only ever used Vim.
+---------------

It's not a *huge* preference -- I have to use Vim [albeit in "vi" mode!]
at work, and I get by just fine -- it's just a bunch of little irritations:

- I've been using some flavor of Vi on BSD & "BSD-like" platforms
  [which Linux *isn't, IMHO] since 1980. Nvi-1.79 is just the last
  stable one that Keith Bostic released that uses the (stripped-down)
  Berkeley DB version 1.85 [before the license change]. I'm used to it.
  Vim is... different.

- Vi doesn't complain if you just type "vi" to the shell: it opens
  a scratch file (e.g., /tmp/vi.ACB7zac3hc) and lets you get one with
  whatever you wanted to do. Vim insists on putting up a monster
  splash screen in that case, that doesn't disappear until you do
  an insert, so I have to type "vim /dev/null" or "vim nosuchfile".

- Vi: "Colors? What colors? I do black & white."  Works for me!!
  Vim: "Here, let me ``help'' you by suddenly recoloring your
       file in 100 pastel colors that are completely unreadable
       unless you use white-on-black text" [which I don't].

- Vi's find-matching-bracket ("%") and related commands work on
  *any* of (), [], or <>. Vim's only works on the first two.
  (Makes editing TML a nightmare...)

- Any number of other similar "trivialities"... but enough so
  that cumulatively they add up to a minor dislike.


-Rob

-----
Rob Warnock			<rpw3@rpw3.org>
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