Why vi? (was Re: [NBLUG/talk] The Debian Way)

[S. Saunders]

On Fri, October 28, 2005 11:54, Walter Hansen wrote:

> I think vi was probably the first really usable text editor on
> *ix systems and everyone collectively heaved a sigh of relief
> and said "I guess that will do" and nobody has had enough
> motivation to replace it with something better.

Note that there is no single agency *TO* "replace it with
something better."

Linus could _probably_ force another editor to become the default on
*Linux* systems... but not on other Freenix'es (e.g. the BSD's), nor
the commercial flavors like Solaris, HP-UX, MacOSX, &c.  <thinks of
"vi" becoming "default" under Mac OS, and giggles helplessly...
some things are just THAT absurd...>

It's the *one* editor that you can reliably find on any flavor of
*NIX, no matter how new or old, free or commercial, etc etc etc.

Also note that "vi" falls into an entire *family* of editors, that
include programmers' tools like "sed"... with commands that transfer
from editor to editor; so, UNIX shell-programmers (i.e. many if not
most SysAdmin types) *like* to have this familiarity when they move
from programming to text-editing and back.

So, even if there were a single agent who *could* make the change,
it's hard to see enough impetus from the SysAdmin community *TO* make
the change.


- Steve S.