vi

© September 2003 Tony Lawrence

The only good HTML editor. Really.

First, it's pronounced vee-eye, not vee or vie.

Second, it's an editor, not a word processor, and while it can be used for just entering text (as opposed to editing), that isn't what it's for.

Bill Joy (recently retired from Sun) wrote vi, and has commented "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".

You can read more about that at Bill Joy's greatest gift to man – the vi editor.

There's a quick intro to vi here: VI Primer

You cannot be a Unix geek and not be able to use vi. Emacs isn't always available, and that goes double for anything else. Get over it, suck in your gut, and learn it.

Got something to add? Send me email.

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