steve szmidt wrote:
> Over the years one gets used to some small things that makes life easier but
> is only slowly catching up on OBSD. I'm curious as why this is. Is it that
> real coders don't need some of them, or is it just something like a matter of
> being a lower priority?
over the years, one gets used to a certain amount of consistancy between
different systems, and I don't mean "different versions of Linux".
...
> * Defaulting to bash, easier to use - Implemented.
that one shows the research you did, which would usually save me from
feeling any reason to respond...
> * Out of date vi, harder to navigate and use, poor visual feedback.
...'cept of all the responses on this, people seem to have missed a few
key reasons why vim is not and should not be part of OpenBSD, even if it
was really vi.
$ ls -l /usr/local/bin/vim /usr/bin/vi
-r-xr-xr-x 3 root bin 277724 Sep 1 13:49 /usr/bin/vi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 1231228 Sep 1 21:03 /usr/local/bin/vim
$ ldd /usr/local/bin/vim /usr/bin/vi
/usr/local/bin/vim:
Start End Type Open Ref GrpRef Name
00000000 00000000 exe 1 0 0 /usr/local/bin/vim
02be4000 22bf7000 rlib 0 1 0 /usr/lib/libcurses.so.10.0
00801000 208dd000 rlib 0 1 0 /usr/local/lib/libiconv.so.4.0
044fd000 24501000 rlib 0 1 0 /usr/local/lib/libintl.so.3.0
01af5000 21b26000 rlib 0 1 0 /usr/lib/libc.so.39.3
09814000 09814000 rtld 0 1 0 /usr/libexec/ld.so
/usr/bin/vi:
Start End Type Open Ref GrpRef Name
00000000 00000000 exe 1 0 0 /usr/bin/vi
05c93000 25ca6000 rlib 0 1 0 /usr/lib/libcurses.so.10.0
06e4e000 26e7f000 rlib 0 1 0 /usr/lib/libc.so.39.3
06e46000 06e46000 rtld 0 1 0 /usr/libexec/ld.so
$ ls -l /usr/local/lib/libiconv.so.4.0 /usr/local/lib/libintl.so.3.0
-r--r--r-- 1 root bin 1005395 Jan 14 2006 /usr/local/lib/libiconv.so.4.0
-r--r--r-- 1 root bin 39135 May 7 14:10 /usr/local/lib/libintl.so.3.0
*oink*
Now, to an emacs user, vim may look pretty lean.
However, OpenBSD is a multi-platform OS. Not everyone has an amd64 or even
the "legacy" i386 platform. A bloated editor is NOT AT ALL FUN on a slower
machine, such as a mac68k or mvme88k. When you call up an editor, it should
just come up, not start chugging... Splash screens aren't too cool,
either, for system stuff.
Take the time to learn real vi. You might just like it. vi is on every
Unix machine...it's like notepad in windows or edlin in MSDOS, you need to
know the core system, and if you really need something else, fine, but
you have to learn what is on the system. Learn vim, you have learned
what is in Linux, not what is in Unix.
For the record: I maintain the FAQ using vi. I write scripts using vi.
When I stick my nose into code, I use vi. When I am teaching someone,
I teach them vi. vi is very capable. It does NOT limit what you
accomplish.
I've had people encourage me to try vim. I've tried it. I didn't like
it...in part, because it was too close to real vi, but clearly not real
vi, so I started using it like vi, and it didn't "work". Plus, I found
some operational modes "quirky" and unexpected. Probably I could turn
knobs and make it work like I expect...but then, I've now got a
non-standard editor running in a non-standard way. No joy in that for
me...
Nick.
