Matthew Winn wrote:
On Sat, 24 Mar 2007 19:47:40 +1200, "John Little"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I suspect that on Bill Joy's original keyboard a colon was not a
shifted key press.
Ex's command prompt was a colon. When the vi(sual) command was added
to ex it made sense for the temporary escape to ex mode to be a colon
as well.
I don't see a problem with having to use shift. There are really only
two types of ex command used from vi: the infrequently used commands
like :quit and :set, which occur only once or twice a session, and
commands like :s that are capable of making so many changes at once
that the overhead of having to use the shift key is small for the
amount of work done.
Whether :quit or :set (and :setlocal) are infrequently used might be question
to debate. Personally I use :new and :q[uit], or :h[elp] and :q[uit], quite
often (as opposed to :qa or :xa which I use only to end a session, of course);
and :set (e.g. to query the present value of an option) is not one of the
commands I use least often.
Having to start ex-commands with a colon doesn't bother me. I don't think it
is due to the colon being unshifted on my AZERTY keyboard: IIRC, on en_US
QWERTY keyboards, the colon is conventiently located right of the L, near
enough to the right Shift key for the two of them to be easily accessible with
two fingers (such as little and ring fingers) of the right hand.
Best regards,
Tony.
--
Too much of a good thing is WONDERFUL.
-- Mae West
