[vcf-midatlantic] Museum 3B1 & PDP-8

[Dave McGuire]

On 10/31/19 1:44 PM, Neil Cherry via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
>>> Personally I would like a better editor than the built in “ed”. Maybe
>>> there
>>> is the “vi” available?
>>
>> But ed(1) is the standard editor!
> 
> I seem to recall that vi relied on ed and ex. In Linux I don't this is
> the case any longer. I don't know about BSD but would expect that this
> is the case there also.

  Vi started life as a "visual" (full-screen) mode within ex. so they
used to be the same editor.  The ex editor was originally derived from
ed.  Put into the filesystem using links, they look at argv[0] to
determine what mode to enter at invocation time.  But that program was a
part of the encumbered BSD code base, until it was open-sourced as a
part of OpenSolaris.

  In the intervening years, vim ("VI Modified") became the de-facto
standard implementation of vi in the Linux world.  Early Linux
distributions were distributed with "original" vi, however.  If memory
serves, this was originally illegal but AT&T eventually let them do it.

              -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA