Both forms existed long before Vim 7: when I first used Vim (vim 6.1)
they already existed with the exact same help text, and I believe that
Vim 5 or earlier already had them too. "vi" in this paragraph means,
not "Vim when named vi" and not "vim when 'compatible' is set" but
"legacy vi, the earlier program, not by Bram Moolenaar". "pre-7.0" has
no meaning by respect to legacy vi, whose versioning system has
nothing in common with Vim's.
Best regards,
Tony.