🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991Jun7.111929.8902@news.cs.indiana.edu> bobmon@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (RAMontante) writes:
>glenn@welchlab.welch.jhu.edu (Glenn M. Mason) writes:
>| 
>| > I think I
>| >studied the command set for about an hour or so, and I have been able to do
>| >just about anything that you can possibly do with vi (which ain't much!-).
>                                                         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>Full-featured vi and emacs share the property of doing anything which can
>be done, in a sense --- that is to say, macros exist for both editors which
>implement Turing machines.  So if you can't do something in vi (or in emacs,
>given five times as many keystrokes) it's your fault, not the editor's.

Then I have a few questions for you which are directed at a standard
implementation of vi on a Unix platform. If vi can do "anything that can
be done" via mocro customization, please show me how to accomplish the
following things ... because if you can, I may actually *use* vi:


Can you show me how to customize vi to display 2 or more files for
simultaneous editing?

Can you tell me how to get vi to use filename completion when I forget the
name of a file I want to edit when I am already in vi ... like commanding
vi to "e <partial_filename>" , then tell vi to display for me a list of
files in the working directory that match that expression?

Can you show me how to customize vi to split the display and allow me to
edit 1 or more files in multiple windows/buffers while giving me an inter-
active shell in another window to access the OS while I am editing ... all
accomplished by never leaving the editor?

Can you show me how to get vi to run an OS command in a window so that I
can edit, cut and paste, etc. the OS command output for use within a file
that I am editing?

Can you show me how to customize vi to run 'make' and automatically bring
into the editor source files and move the cursor to the point of syntax
errors ... and move forward/backward from/to next error and/or source
file tracking each error (just like many integrated edit/compile/debug
environments that come with many PC-based language systems?

Can you show me how to edit a document in vi and ask vi to invoke 'spell'
over the text and then move the cursor forward/backward tracking possible
spelling errors at the touch of a key (only after I have been given a
chance to edit the list of possible mistakes, deleting the entries that
I know are spelled correctly and may not be in the dictionary)?

Can you tell me how to make vi push and pop directories so that I can
move around easily and edit different files in different directories
without leaving ther editor (oh yeah ... and if I forget the name of the
directories, I want vi to help me out with their names as well)?

Can you tell me how I can make vi map any particular function that it
is capable of to a keystroke that I am comfortable with?

Can you show me how to make vi *warn* me that the file I am attempting
to save has been saved to disk after I invoked vi on the file (which
means that someone edited and saved the file within the time I was
editing the same file)?

Can you tell me how to customize vi to give on-line, context-sensitive
help text for *any* possible function that vi has?

Can you show me how to make vi aware that when I type a certain word
abbreviation, vi really knows that I want the abbreviation expanded?

Can you show me how to make vi display the time or date in an obscure
portion of the screen, or notify me that new mail has arrived, or display
the name of the file I am editing, or tell me what editing mode I am in?


If you can show me how to do any of these things, I'd really like to
know how! Because these are just *some* of the features that I want in an
editor and already have with no customization at all. These features are
all available within Jove which is a free, public-domain program ... and
Jove is an excellent editor but is really just an emacs implementation
that is merely a subset of most of the more powerful emacs implementations
available. 

If these things can be done in vi, show me *how* it can be done, because
I would be very interested in knowing how to customize vi to do some of
these things ... and I'm sure there are other vi users out there that
would like to know as well! Show me!!


Glenn