vi: /V-I/, *not* /vi/ and *never* /siks/ n.
[from `Visual Interface'] A screen editor crufted together by
Bill Joy for
an early
BSD release. Became the de facto standard UNIX editor and a
nearly undisputed hacker favorite outside of MIT until the rise of
Emacs
after about 1984. It starts up faster than the bulkier versions of Emacs.
See also :
- VIM - "Vi IMproved" - an expanded and more user friendly clone
- Tends to frustrate new users to no end, as it will neither take commands while expecting input text nor vice versa, and the default setup provides no indication of which mode the editor is in (one correspondent accordingly reports that he has often heard the editor's name pronounced /vi:l/). Nevertheless it is still widely used (about half the respondents in a 1991 Usenet poll preferred it), and even Emacs fans often resort to it as a mail editor and for small editing jobs (mainly because it starts up faster than the bulkier versions of Emacs). See [holy wars]?.