tags:

views:

481

answers:

6

Another question asked why there are so few non-vi modal editors. A few of the comments in that question mentioned other modal editors in passing, but I think that it would be useful to develop a more comprehensive list. Searching for this information on Google is difficult, as vim-related information tends to drown out everything else.

A few items to get things rolling:

A: 

Elvis is one of these editors. Also, nvi could count as one.

Dev er dev
Both of those are vi clones, so they don't really count.
Paul Tomblin
A: 

There are so few modal editors because:

a) they are a PITA to learn.

b) it was a solution to a particaular problem (getting a WYSIWYG error to work on a generic low function terminal) which does not really exist any more.

With a modern GUI (or indeed a 3270 terminal) you only need to provide a test box or specific screen area for command to achieve the same effect.

James Anderson
People who can touch type aren't going to go away any time soon, and a modal editor has a HUGE advantage to touch typists that we don't have to move our hands off the home row to navigate around the text.
Paul Tomblin
-1 flamebate, also not answering the question
hop
Your answer belongs on the other question. This is just a request for a list of applications.
skiphoppy
When I get enough rep I'm going to return hand vote this down :-)
Mark Beckwith
Flamebate, doesn't answer the authors question, and is completely opinionated. -1
mathepic
A: 

Because modal editors are evil? (Someone add an EMACS tag to this.)

Charlie Martin
If you want to answer the question about why there are so few modal editors, why don't you follow the link to that question?
Paul Tomblin
+2  A: 

"why there are so few non-vi modal editors"

I think it's reasonable to conclude that vim is so incredibly deep and extensible that competing with it (attempting to make a comparable modal editor) would be extremely counter-productive.

Geoff
+3  A: 

There have been many Non-vi modal editors over the years. Many of them tied to a single operating system.

WordStar, edlin, and ISPF come to mind. Also EDIT from the HDOS system. There are probably at least a dozen others named EDIT or it's variants.

Darron
A: 

I've never tried it, but AFAIK Emacs has a plugin to emulate vi's modal editing.

too much php
You mean Viper (http://www.delorie.com/gnu/docs/emacs/viper.html), the spiritual inverse of Vimacs (http://www.algorithm.com.au/code/vimacs/). Yes, some people are crazy enough to use both. :-)
ephemient