Subject: Re: VI in dumb mode?

From: der Mouse <[email-masked]>

>> traditional 'vi' invokes 'open mode' if it can't do the right thing
>> with the terminal.  [...]  nvi should do this as well, but Keith
>> Bostic hasn't done the support for it yet.  it requires several
>> things:

>> (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.

As far as I have been able to tell, open mode is just regular vi with
the ordinary screen display replaced with a version that always
displays the current line, using backspaces and overstriking to update
the line, and printing a newline and doing a fresh update whenever
moving between lines.  I certainly haven't been able to find anything
other than the mode of display that differs....

					der Mouse

			    [email-masked]

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From: Andrew Cagney <[email-masked]>

Just to set one bit straight,

I thought that elvis (NetBSD 0.9) supported open mode.  I was wrong. 
Just found a machine to try it on.

So NetBSD hasn't lost any functionality and `soon' will gain some :-).

Any way,

I find Open Mode useful when I'm either using an unknown (possibly
hardcopy) terminal or the termcap/terminfo stuff is missing.  For me
this is typically when I've, yet again, got the /etc/fstab entries
wrong.  If I'm really desperate, I'll use ed.

					enjoy, Andrew