This is kind of a newbie inquiry. Elvis is the default vi editor with
slackware. Is this because it has some advantages over vim or is it
because it is closer to the original vi? What are its advantages over vim
(if any)?

Ed LaBonte wrote:

> This is kind of a newbie inquiry. Elvis is the default vi editor with
> slackware. Is this because it has some advantages over vim or is it
> because it is closer to the original vi? What are its advantages over vim
> (if any)?

It's not the default: you can run plain "vi".
Text editors are all about preference anyways....

--
BOFH Excuse #225: It's those computer people in X {city of world}. They
keep stuffing things up.

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NeoSadist wrote:

> Ed LaBonte wrote:
>
>> This is kind of a newbie inquiry. Elvis is the default vi editor with
>> slackware. Is this because it has some advantages over vim or is it
>> because it is closer to the original vi? What are its advantages over vim
>> (if any)?
>
> It's not the default: you can run plain "vi".
> Text editors are all about preference anyways....

$ ls -l `which vi`
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 5 2004-07-10 18:41 /usr/bin/vi -> elvis

IIRC the true vi program is not FOSS, just the specs for it are open (part
of the POSIX standard, again all IIRC), so we have to rely on clones like
vim and elvis.

As for why elvis is the default and not vim, I'd guess the elvis package is
smaller than vim.

Blumf

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Ed LaBonte wrote:

>This is kind of a newbie inquiry. Elvis is the default vi editor with
>slackware. Is this because it has some advantages over vim or is it
>because it is closer to the original vi? What are its advantages over vim
>(if any)?
>
>
If you're interested, the "real" vi program is available at Gunnar
Ritter's Software for UNIX page --
http://omnibus.uni-freiburg.de/~gritter. It's the source for ex and vi.
You should be aware, however, of the disclaimer:

"Compared to most of its many clones, the original vi is a rather
small program (~120 KB code on i386) just with its extremely
powerful editing interface, but lacking fancy features like multiple
undo, multiple screens or syntax highlighting. In other words, it is
a typical Unix program that does exactly what it should and nothing
more. I intend to preserve this style in maintaining my port, except
for changes to achieve POSIX.2 standards compliance, features in the
SVR4 versions of vi, and, of course, bug fixes."

Gunnar also provides the source for some other interesting utilities.

Ed LaBonte wrote:

> Elvis is the default vi editor with
> slackware. Is this because it has some advantages over vim or is it
> because it is closer to the original vi? What are its advantages over vim
> (if any)?

There are several programs that use your "default" editor (as set in your
EDITOR or VISUAL environment variables.) Some of these, like crontab or
vipw, have problems with the way vim handles permissions on temporary
files. So if you're a vi user, it's better to use elvis (or the "vi"
symlink to it) as your default editor. I have heard of similar problems
with emacs, by the way.

Other than that, I would always opt for the full-featured vim for my editing
needs.

Jeffrey

Ed LaBonte wrote:
> This is kind of a newbie inquiry. Elvis is the default vi editor with
> slackware. Is this because it has some advantages over vim or is it
> because it is closer to the original vi? What are its advantages over vim
> (if any)?

Patrick has been packaging elvis with his distro for longer than I can
remember. Only in the later Slackware releases (just exactly when, I
can't remember) has he included vim. But he still symlinks vi to elvis.
Therefore, elvis reigns as being here first.

--

humjohn AT aerosurf DOT net

<kinda-OT-troll-mode>

nano forever

</kinda-OT-troll-mode>

~Mik

--
Top-Bottom Programming never gets you where you wanted to go.
Bottom-Top Programming gets you where you never wanted to go.

while not life:
sleep((sleep.normal_time - 5h)); eat(mode=fast); pc_mainloop()

Mario Berger wrote:
> nano forever

alt.religion.emacs

'nuf said.

--
Joost Kremers joostkremers@yahoo.com
Selbst in die Unterwelt dringt durch Spalten Licht
EN:SiS(9)

On Wed, 22 Sep 2004 10:04:40 GMT,
Ed LaBonte <ed@NOSPAMlabonte.com> wrote:
> Elvis is the default vi editor with
> slackware. Is this because it has some advantages over vim or is it
> because it is closer to the original vi?

I'd imagine it's because Elvis is closer to the original vi, and
therefore more what a new user would expect from typing 'vi'.

> What are its advantages over vim
> (if any)?

In short, it has more features, which you might or might not find
useful. A summary can be found here:

<http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/vimfaq.html> (Question 1.4)

--
Mark Hill
Email (Just for Fun):
echo zbp.yvnzt.yyvuez | rot13 | rev | sed s@\\.@\\@@

On 2004-09-22, Blumf <blumf@hot.mail.com> wrote:

> $ ls -l `which vi`
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 5 2004-07-10 18:41 /usr/bin/vi -> elvis

Wow. What a neat command. Like a shortcut pipe. Works from anywhere. But,
the first time I tried it with regular apostrophes, nada. But with the left
hand apostrophe, voila! Why does this work. ...or at least point me to a
read. man bash?

nb