🚀 go-pugleaf

bvaughan@sheps.Princeton.EDU (Barbara Vaughan) writes:

>This thread has come full circle.  Here is my summary so far:
>A. says "vi can't handle rectangular blocks"
>B. says "yes it can; here is the arcane code to do what you want to do."
>C. says "That's so arcane; a good editor would do it much more transparently"
>D. says "Well, if you really want to do stuff like that, use a spreadsheet
>         or word processor; vi is an editor"
>E. I post three examples of tasks that are not suited to a spreadsheet or
>         wordprocessor but where easy handling of rectangular blocks would
>         be useful.  I didn't say vi couldn't do these things.  I just
>         wanted to illustrate that these are not tasks that are suited for
>         spreadsheets or word processors.     
>F., G., H., ... all post some arcane vi code or suggest using Basic (!!!) to
>         perform these tasks.

Given the volume of discussion on this subject, perhaps I should draw
people's attention to the following two lines from the recent regular
posting listing the goodies available from the worldwide VI archive sites.

blocks             - Block- delte, move and copy. Sep 24 1991. Geoff Clare.
blocks.d.Z         - Explanation of the blocks-macros. Sep 24 1991.

These macros handle rectangular blocks in just the way you'd expect.  You
mark the top left and bottom right corners (and if copying, the top left
for the new location), and a single command does the rest.

(If the archive maintainer is reading this, perhaps he could correct the
typo in the listing - "delte" should be "delete".)
-- 
Geoff Clare <gwc@root.co.uk> (USA antiquated mailers: ...!uunet!root.co.uk!gwc)
UniSoft Limited, London, England.   Tel: +44 71 729 3773   Fax: +44 71 729 3273