[buug] vim (& [n]vi?) annoyances, etc.

Ian Zimmerman itz at buug.org
Sun Apr 10 12:16:44 PDT 2011


Michael> Hey, keypad and cursor (e.g. arrow) keys?  That's a feature,
Michael> not a bug.  Don't need no steenkin' non-ASCII keyboard input
Michael> for a text editor - that would just cause user to become
Michael> addicted to some keys that may not be present on all keyboards
Michael> - so best not to use them :-).  Really only need some of those
Michael> funky keys for, oh, like X (e.g. some kind of Meta key), some
Michael> operating systems that use them to switch virtual consoles
Michael> (like Linux - and when on the console), or that nice big
Michael> operating system called Emacs - but too bad Emacs doesn't
Michael> supply a good text editor.

Well, I'm not going to argue with the philosophy, but why oh why can't
vi just _do nothing_ when you hit one of those keys (as anyone who ever
uses another program will), instead of horribly and irreversibly messing
up your screen?  Every time this happens to me I have to do :q! and
start from scratch.  After cursing (NPI) profusely, of course.

-- 
Ian Zimmerman <itz at buug.org>
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Ham is for reading, not for eating.




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