poll for another vi clone

[Paul Fox]

I've spent some time and energy converting a copy of
micro-Emacs into a very useful vi-workalike. (If I get any
flames about this I think I'll puke.) It preserves the emacs
multi-window, multi-buffer capabilities, as well as key
rebindablility, though I may have broken that somewhat
and not noticed it -- I've never wanted to use it,
since what I was after was a vi clone.

I think I've succeeded pretty well -- the finger-feel, if you
will, is very close to that of vi, even if the look isn't all
there. But with very few exceptions, the cursor will be where
you want it when you want it, and the simple ':' commands work
as expected. (Not full ex, but the file nameing, reading,
editing commands, and ":g" and ":s", ":l", and ":p".) Almost
all vi commands are represented -- the most glaring exceptions
are the "!" operator (for filtering text), the "@" command for
executing a named buffer, and the ":map" command. The set
options don't map exactly, but the important modes of
operation are there.

I suspect that this new editor (and is definitely _new_, and
not a simple ifdef from micro-Emacs), which I call "vile"
(which stands for "VI Like Emacs" :-) has some UNIX
dependencies that I've introduced, so it probably won't easily
compile on DOS anymore, but that could probably be fixed.

It's pretty stable -- I only find a bug once a month or so,
and another user is in much the same state. I'm sure that
there are more -- they just don't show up with our particular
usage patterns.

I'm _not_ planning on posting it right away, unless the demand
is overwhelming, and I don't think it will be since everyone
is still busy drooling over elvis (Congratulations on a nice
job, Steve...). What I'm looking for is a few people willing
to do very friendly beta testing, which means they'll try to
find and maybe fix the bug, in addition to letting me know.

If you have that kind of interest, let me know, and perhaps we
can work something out.

--
paul fox, p...@cayman.com, (617)494-1999
Cayman Systems, 26 Landsdowne St., Cambridge, MA 02139