Re: Gotta Learn Vi . . . . . . (was Re: [tlug] [Newbie] Becoming'root'in Kubuntu: Use sudo)

[Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com>]

On Mon, 27 Aug 2007, steven smith wrote:

> Bill Joy said QUOTE
> ...It took a long time. It was really hard to do because you've got to 
> remember that I was trying to make it usable over a 300 baud modem. That's 
> also the reason you have all these funny commands.

This, I'm not buying. Do you have a plausable explanation why the key
sequence for vi's "change to end of line" command is noticably more
efficient than Emacs' equivalant at 300 bps? Can you think of *any* vi
key sequences that are *that* much more efficient? Keep in mind that
someone typing at a full 300 bps would be typing at about 360 words
per minute, some four times as fast as your typical fast typist, and
three times as fast as my burst rate when typing my most commonly used
phrases. (I am a faster than average typist--about 100 wpm.)

I expect that at 300 bps the big advantage of vi over Emacs at the time
was the screen update optimizer. Curses, the standard library for this
sort of thing, was developed from vi's screen update code, as far as I
know. I don't have a copy of [1] to confirm this, though.

[1] Arnold, K. C. R. C. (1977), Screen Updating and Cursor Movement
Optimization: A Library Package., University of California, Berkeley

cjs
--
Curt Sampson       <cjs@example.com>        +81 90 7737 2974
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