SUMMARY: A decent alternative to /usr/bin/vi?

From: Vitaly Beliaev (vit@mmk.ru)
Date: Thu Oct 02 1997 - 06:10:23 CDT


Salutations!

Thanks so much to all people who answered to my question! I have
received about 36 messages and I am very grateful to the following
people:

(Niall O Broin) nobroin@esoc.esa.de
Seth Rothenberg <SROTHENB@montefiore.org>
Jason Marshall <jasonm@vsl.com>
Mariel Feder <unix.support@central.meralco.com.ph>
Khoo Boon Hing <boonhing@ncb.gov.sg>
Michael Galloway <mgx@spruce.lsd.ornl.gov>
Ian TCollins <itc1@scigen.co.uk>
Przemyslaw Baszkiewicz <bp17@albit.geo.uw.edu.pl>
Singh Adrian <singha@aah.co.uk>
(Mr Rene Occelli) rene@iusti.univ-mrs.fr
(Raymond Rodebaugh) ray@therad.rpslmc.edu
Alejandro <alejolo@sue.ideam.gov.co>
(G. Dimitoglou) george@esa.nascom.nasa.gov
Rich Kulawiec <rsk@itw.com>
Umesh Shrikrishna Potbhare <upotbhar@cvimail.cv.com>
Ian Ashton <i.ashton@Bradford.ac.uk>
"Jason L. Harrell" <jason@jsa.com>
(Celeste Stokely) celeste@celestial.stokely.com
"Karl E. Vogel" <vogelke@c17mis.region2.wpafb.af.mil>
(Howard Modell) howie@warlok.ds.boeing.com
Harvey Wamboldt <harvey@iotek.ns.ca>
Dan Pritts <danno@aa.fv.com>
Patrick Patterson <ppatters@gdc.ca>
"jon@meyercapel.com" <jon@meyercapel.com>
"Mark 'Hex' Hershberger" <mah@eecs.tulane.edu>
Henry Stilmack <hps@jach.hawaii.edu>
Angel Ortiz <cherub@lava.net>
Benjamin Cline <benji@hnt.com>
Jim Harmon <jharmon@telecnnct.com>
Simon Wagstaff <wagstaff@tellabs.com>
(System Administrator) admin@lovey.ucsd.edu
(Cheryl L. Southard) cld@astro.caltech.edu
Stefan Voss <s.voss@terradata.de>
Mark Heath <mheath@netspace.net.au>
Chris Marble <cmarble@orion.ac.hmc.edu>
(roop) roop@media.microland.co.in
Brian O'Mahoney <brian@teraflex.com>

I was looking for a small simple text editor that could be used for
quickly and comfortable editing plain text files, different system
files, etc. The most important is that such editor is supposed to be in
/sbin, therefore root would have a good tool to alter files in a case of
system's crash.

Some replies strongly criticized me for doing a big sacriledge, that I do
neglect using `vi`. Nope. I have nothing bad regarding `vi` and use it
always as we have nothing but it. I was just wondering is there a pretty
simple editor with rich features of, say, emacs or DOS's multiedit.

GUI editors:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Majority adviced using `emacs`! Yep, it's great if you are working with GUI
and your machine is pretty fast. Gnu emacs can be found at:
        ftp://ftp.gnu.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu
        ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu

Others suggested /usr/openwin/bin/textedit or `xedit`.

Howard Modell recommends Nedit:
        <http://fnpspa.fnal.gov/nirvana/nedit.html>

Text mode editors:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Michael Galloway proposed to look at vim & elvis:

        ftp://ftp.cs.pdx.edu/pub/elvis/README.html
        http://www.math.fu-berlin.de/~guckes/vim/

Karl E. Vogel sent pointers to vim (vi improved) locations:
  Main site is ftp://ftp.oce.nl/pub/misc/vim/unix/vim-4.2.tar.gz
  Mirrors for Vim version 4.2:

        ftp://petrified.cic.net/mirrors/vim/ (USA)
        ftp://jagubox.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/unix/vim/ (USA)
        ftp://ftp.uni-erlangen.de/pub/utilities/vim/ (Germany)
        ftp://ftp.prz.tu-berlin.de/pub/unix/editors/vim/ (Germany)
        ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/pub/misc/editors/vim/ (Germany)
        ftp://nuxi.cs.ucdavis.edu/pub/vim (USA)

P.Alejandro adviced the following:

  Another visual and powerful editor is JOE 2.8 (Joe's Own Editor) which is
  a fairly close clone of Borland Brief and has key binding modes for pico,
  Wordstar and emacs. The main distribution site is at:
        ftp://ftp.std.com/src/editors/.

  Jed, a clone of VMS edit.It depends on SLANG so you will need to grab a
  copy of the latest library version from the same site.
         ftp://space,mit/edu/pub/davis/.

Dan Pritts & Henry Stilmack pointed to `pico` (a part if pine):

        ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu
        ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu//pine/unix-bin-compressed/pico-bin.solaris.Z
        http://www.washington.edu/pine/

Additional information:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are plenty of other text editors around; see the FAQ for Usenet's
comp.text.

To find out more information about 'vi' glance at:
        http://albrecht.ecn.purdue.edu/~taylor/4ltrwrd/html/section3_4.html

Resume:
~~~~~~~
I installed `vim`. It's a regular vi with additional powerful commands.
I either tried `pico` and `joe`. These are good and handy editors as well!
'elvis' is capable of viewing 'man', 'html' and other file formats!
My genuine gratitude again to all for your suggestions! Thanks a lot and
have a good time!

Regards,
Vitaly

-==================================================================-
 Vitaly Belyaev: Unix system administrator, JVSC MMK, RUSSIA
 e-mail: vit@mmk.ru voice: +7 (3511) 333824
 Before you judge someone, stop and remember, we all see the same sun.
                                                       Mr. President
-==================================================================-



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Sep 28 2001 - 23:12:04 CDT