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Parent @brice@toot.lv Open
@brice@toot.lv
Nebiju mājās, kad dievs dalīja spēju pieņemt lietas, kuras nevar mainīt.
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@Gunti@toot.lv · Feb 25, 2026
@brice@toot.lv melo. #viņasMeloLabāk
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@JdeBP@mastodonapp.uk · Feb 20, 2026
@ratsnakegames@mastodon.social No, it doesn't. As I said, I'm talking about the original Notepad. And that gained significantly simply by having a better keyboard than a Model F XT or AT and better graphics than CGA. It was basic things like SVGA graphics being able to display more characters on the screen with the same font sizes; dedicated editing keys; and Windows's ability to set a colour palette. Even just in its original form, it got more usable. Whereas there were no similar gains to be had by solely running Joy+Horton #vi on better hardware. So the Notepad experience got better as the years went by, whilst the Joy+Horton vi experience stayed the same. What began as a huge step up became less and less so. The Joy+Horton vi experience was not as good as running the clones in their 'vi' modes now might lead one to believe. To step up from Notepad, one really had to go with the vi clones. Or Qedit, T, T2, E, EPM, The Semware Editor, Brief, Boxer, and suchlike. @cstross@wandering.shop @davep@infosec.exchange
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Parent @kaveman@mastodon.bsd.cafe Open
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@JdeBP@mastodonapp.uk · Feb 12, 2026
@kaveman@mastodon.bsd.cafe Yes. I was mentioning this to @cks@mastodon.social the other day. https://tty0.social/@JdeBP/116030855863806427 I think that it came out in the early 1990s. The copyright dates in the source uniformly say 1983, which would make OpenWatcom vi the earliest vi clone on record (pre-dating #STEVIE by 4 years). However, they say this uniformly, even for its OS/2 and Windows NT parts, which couldn't have existed in 1983. And 1983 pre-dates even Waterloo C. So I suspect some Sybase lawyer has lied in these copyright declarations. Watcom had a non-vi multi-window and menus TUI editor for DOS named wbed.exe at one point. #Watcom #OpenWatcom #vi #retrocomputing #ComputerHistory
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Parent @gumnos@mastodon.bsd.cafe Open
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@JdeBP@mastodonapp.uk · Feb 12, 2026
@gumnos@mastodon.bsd.cafe I mentioned Guckes's list not having Heirloom vi in that other thread. I haven't thought about these in years, and they are an understandable additional blind spot in Guckes's list; but the MKS Toolkit had a vi, as did Interix. https://www.mkssoftware.com/docs/man1/vi.1.asp The :open test indicates that vi in the MKS Toolkit was actual Joy+Horton vi. #Interix (at least according to an old Scott Mueller book) had both vi and nvi, so I wouldn't be surprised if that turned out to have been Bostic #nvi by two names. As I recall, Central Point PC Tools, the Norton Utilities, and the Graham Utilities had text editors of varying degrees but did not have vi. @cks@mastodon.social #vi #ComputerHistory #retrocomputing
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Parent @cks@mastodon.social Open
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@JdeBP@mastodonapp.uk · Feb 12, 2026
@cks@mastodon.social OpenWatcom vi is source available. https://mastodonapp.uk/@JdeBP/116052015020764901 Ritter's Heirloom #vi is in #FreeBSD ports today, coming from the same place that it has for a long time. https://freshports.org/editors/2bsd-vi/ It was dropped from #ArchLinux because it did not compile and hadn't changed in 20 years. Ironically, this is because the (GNU) C language had changed, and it has to nowadays be compiled forcing an older GNU C language version. https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=2285124#p2285124 Several people have independently discovered the Makefile patch that gets it to build on #Debian and the like. https://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?p=629775 https://gist.github.com/cwfoo/01abac5c39f398b7e7b16a2b87aa518b #elvis, the precursor to #nvi, is packaged for both #NetBSD/#pkgsrc and #OpenBSD. https://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/current/pkgsrc/editors/elvis/index.html https://github.com/openbsd/ports/tree/master/editors/elvis #retrocomputing #ComputerHistory #Watcom #OpenWatcom
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JdeBP @JdeBP@mastodonapp.uk
On #Illumos, Jov vi is in /usr/src/cmd/vi: https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/tree/master/usr/src/cmd/vi On #OpenBSD, Bostic #nvi is in /usr/src/usr.bin/vi/vi; #NetBSD having it in /usr/src/external/bsd/nvi; and #FreeBSD in /usr/src/contrib/nvi: https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/tree/main/contrib/nvi FreeBSD has an nvi2 in ports: https://freshports.org/editors/nvi2/ OpenBSD has elvis in ports: https://github.com/openbsd/ports/blob/master/editors/elvis/pkg/DESCR Ritter's Heirloom vi is on SourceForge: https://ex-vi.sourceforge.net STEVIE was posted to comp.sources.unix in 1988: https://sources.vsta.org/comp.sources.unix/volume15/stevie/ Unfortunately, Sven Guckes's vi Clones WWW site was never completed with some of this, notably lacking Heirloom vi, for example. https://guckes.net/vi/clones.html But it does mention oft-overlooked commercial clones such as Watcom's vi, a from-scratch implementation started in 1983 that is also now source-available: https://github.com/open-watcom/owp4v1copy/tree/master/bld/vi #vi #retrocomputing #ComputerHistory #STEVIE #elvis #VIM #NeoVIM #Watcom #OpenWatcom
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Parent @gumnos@mastodon.bsd.cafe Open
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@JdeBP@mastodonapp.uk · Feb 11, 2026
@gumnos@mastodon.bsd.cafe @joel@gts.tumfatig.net It's a good test. I probably haven't used open mode since I started building #STEVIE from source back in the 1980s. Which of course I used on VDU terminals, not the paper ones. (-: The test for it being Bostic #nvi , in my experience, is whether it supports :qa . #vi
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@JdeBP@mastodonapp.uk · Feb 11, 2026
@davefischer@hachyderm.io I'm guessing that that was Ritter's Heirloom vi. https://mastodonapp.uk/@JdeBP/116052015020764901 There are discussions in an Arch Linux forum of its package being removed because it hadn't changed in two decades and the (GNU flavoured) C language had. It's in the #FreeBSD ports collection; and several people have independently come up with the Makefile patch that gets it to build on Debian Linux. https://freshports.org/editors/2bsd-vi/ #vi #retrocomputing #ComputerHistory #gcc #ArchLinux
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JdeBP @JdeBP@mastodonapp.uk
On #Illumos, Jov vi is in /usr/src/cmd/vi: https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/tree/master/usr/src/cmd/vi On #OpenBSD, Bostic #nvi is in /usr/src/usr.bin/vi/vi; #NetBSD having it in /usr/src/external/bsd/nvi; and #FreeBSD in /usr/src/contrib/nvi: https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/tree/main/contrib/nvi FreeBSD has an nvi2 in ports: https://freshports.org/editors/nvi2/ OpenBSD has elvis in ports: https://github.com/openbsd/ports/blob/master/editors/elvis/pkg/DESCR Ritter's Heirloom vi is on SourceForge: https://ex-vi.sourceforge.net STEVIE was posted to comp.sources.unix in 1988: https://sources.vsta.org/comp.sources.unix/volume15/stevie/ Unfortunately, Sven Guckes's vi Clones WWW site was never completed with some of this, notably lacking Heirloom vi, for example. https://guckes.net/vi/clones.html But it does mention oft-overlooked commercial clones such as Watcom's vi, a from-scratch implementation started in 1983 that is also now source-available: https://github.com/open-watcom/owp4v1copy/tree/master/bld/vi #vi #retrocomputing #ComputerHistory #STEVIE #elvis #VIM #NeoVIM #Watcom #OpenWatcom
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Parent @JdeBP@mastodonapp.uk Open
@JdeBP@mastodonapp.uk
People waxing lyrical about using 'original vi', both nowadays in 2026 and back in 2006, haven't a clue what that is. There's only one family of operating systems where 'vi' will actually run the orig
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@JdeBP@mastodonapp.uk · Feb 11, 2026
On #Illumos, Jov vi is in /usr/src/cmd/vi: https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/tree/master/usr/src/cmd/vi On #OpenBSD, Bostic #nvi is in /usr/src/usr.bin/vi/vi; #NetBSD having it in /usr/src/external/bsd/nvi; and #FreeBSD in /usr/src/contrib/nvi: https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/tree/main/contrib/nvi FreeBSD has an nvi2 in ports: https://freshports.org/editors/nvi2/ OpenBSD has elvis in ports: https://github.com/openbsd/ports/blob/master/editors/elvis/pkg/DESCR Ritter's Heirloom vi is on SourceForge: https://ex-vi.sourceforge.net STEVIE was posted to comp.sources.unix in 1988: https://sources.vsta.org/comp.sources.unix/volume15/stevie/ Unfortunately, Sven Guckes's vi Clones WWW site was never completed with some of this, notably lacking Heirloom vi, for example. https://guckes.net/vi/clones.html But it does mention oft-overlooked commercial clones such as Watcom's vi, a from-scratch implementation started in 1983 that is also now source-available: https://github.com/open-watcom/owp4v1copy/tree/master/bld/vi #vi #retrocomputing #ComputerHistory #STEVIE #elvis #VIM #NeoVIM #Watcom #OpenWatcom
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@JdeBP@mastodonapp.uk · Feb 11, 2026
People waxing lyrical about using 'original vi', both nowadays in 2026 and back in 2006, haven't a clue what that is. There's only one family of operating systems where 'vi' will actually run the original vi program by Joy, Horton, et al.: #Illumos and its derivatives #Tribblix, #OmniOS, and #SmartOS. *Everyone else* uses one of the ground-up clones. On #FreeBSD, #OpenBSD, and #NetBSD, it's Bostic's early 1990s #nvi, which was derived from Kirkendall's elvis, a clone written some time around 1990. On Linux-based operating systems, vi either is Bostic nvi, or is one of the derivatives of STEVIE (the middle-1980s vi clone for the Atari ST that inspired Kirkendall to write elvis in the first place): Moolenaar's VIM or NeoVIM. On none of those will you get original Joy+Horton vi in base, or indeed packaged/in ports. Yes, Heirloom vi exists, which is Ritter's 2002 fork of 1985 Joy+Horton vi. But it's not even available in Arch Linux nowadays. #vi #retrocomputing #ComputerHistory
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@restorante@social.linux.pizza · Jan 28, 2026
@MegaMichelle@a2mi.social I think the war has been, is, and will always be about Vi & Emacs. It will never be about VSCode because the weight is different. Vi/Emacs is the Jomsviking of text editing. #Vi #Emacs #VSCode
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Parent @felix@wandering.shop Open
@felix@wandering.shop
Oh look, there's a cool new app that runs in the terminal! Let's check out the feature list: "Written in Rust!" That's not a feature. No-one cares. "Uses Vi-like bindings!" Sure, keep thinking that ma
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Boosted by Charlie Stross @cstross@wandering.shop
@felix@wandering.shop · Nov 22, 2025
On second thought, #Vi-like keybindings do have a couple of advantages: 1. Simplicity: you have to memorize them, but that's *easy* since they're single letters. 2. Familiarity: knowing you can open many text-based programs and type / to search or q to quit is a breath of fresh air. But no, most of us don't think "3wdb" when trying to delete the third word from the cursor. That's machine speak.
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