BKLERNVI.RVW  931206

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"Learning the vi Editor", Lamb, 1990, 0-937175-67-6

The debate over vi, whether it is the greatest thing since sliced bread or a
tool of the devil, still rages.  (You think not?  You didn't read all my mail
after reviewing "termcap and terminfo.")  I suspect, however, that those who
dislike vi have never read this book.

Ideally, this book should be read first at the computer.  It may take a novice
several hours to work through the examples, but having done so, the reader will
have a thorough grounding in the capabilities of the editor.  Not mastery,
perhaps--that will come only with practice.  A single pass, however, will give
you an understanding of what the editor can do and how to approach it.

The approach may be critical.  vi is very much a programmer's editor.  Not
simply in that it is used for editing source code, but also in that the text
manipulations are very procedural.  This may run counter to the sensibilities
of those who are used to editors that are built as writing tools.  The very
fact that vi opens in command mode is a cultural indication.

(This question of cultures in editing programs is an interesting one.  Wordstar
took many of its central commands from a Pascal system editor, and was not the
only program to do so.  When I was part of a study of the learning curve for
emacs, I skewed the results.  I had never used emacs, but I *had* used
PerfectWriter.  I was, therefore, amused to see that vi had obviously been an
influence on an old Apple editor called Magic Window.)

If you use vi more often than you like, this book may change your mind.  If you
use vi every chance you get, you may find this a valuable reference.  If you
are only starting to use UNIX, get this book and save yourself some grief.

copyright Robert M. Slade, 1993   BKLERNVI.RVW  931206
 
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Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" (Oct. '94) Springer-Verlag