Subject: Re: VI in dumb mode? <[email-masked]>

From: Ken Hornstein <[email-masked]>

>> The problem above is that you should be invoking vi by using the name
>> "ex" - and you can edit using ex-mode commands (all the ':' ones you
>> use in vi).
>
>not really true: traditional 'vi' invokes 'open mode' if it can't do
>the right thing with the terminal.  for instance, under OSF/1:
>
>[...]
>nvi should do this as well, but Keith Bostic hasn't done the support
>for it yet.  it requires several things:
>	(1) one line 'editing windows' and currently nvi only has
>		support for windows >= 2 lines, and
>	(2) a reasonable idea of what open mode does; it's completely
>		undocumented!

I've always been under the impression that open mode is exactly like the
regular mode of vi, except of course you can only see one line at a time.
If that's the case, then (2) shouldn't be too hard.

--Ken