20 lines
1 KiB
Text
20 lines
1 KiB
Text
The Traditional Vi
|
|
Source Code for Modern Unix Systems
|
|
|
|
The vi editor is one of the most common text editors on Unix. It
|
|
was developed starting around 1976 by Bill Joy at UCB, who was
|
|
tired of the ed editor. But since he used ed as a code base, access
|
|
to the original sources has required a Unix Source Code License
|
|
for more than twenty years. In January 2002, Caldera was so kind
|
|
to remove usage restrictions to the Ancient Unix Code by a BSD-style
|
|
license (see the announcement at Slashdot) and thus vi is now
|
|
finally free.
|
|
|
|
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.
|