Piero Bosio Social Web Site Personale

Ever wonder why vi uses hjkl for movement?It's not arbitrary—it's hardware history. The ADM-3A terminal had arrows printed directly on those keys.ESC was also where Tab is now. Vi wasn't designed for ergonomics, it was designed for the keyboard that existed.http://www.slackware.com/~r1w1s1/nvi.html#_curiosities#nvi #vim #vi

Also something else that I have noticed as an #OpenBSD user is that vi and nvi undo functions seem to both work the same ? I mean you can press u in both to undo and then press . to do multiple undos. Yet I thought it was only nvi that had that feature? I'll have to read up more on both to find differences.

@mwl@io.mwl.io’s post made me revisit RCS in a very small role: a safety net for individual files.Paired with nvi, a tiny wrapper lets me snapshot configs before risky edits. Simple, local, no magic.Example wrapper I’m using:#!/bin/sh## safeedit — RCS-backed safe editing with nvi#set -eif [ $# -ne 1 ]; then echo "usage: safeedit <file>" >&2 exit 1fiFILE="$1"if [ ! -f "$FILE" ]; then echo "safeedit: file not found: $FILE" >&2 exit 1fiDIR=$(dirname "$FILE")BASE=$(basename "$FILE")RCS_DIR="$DIR/RCS"RCS_FILE="$RCS_DIR/$BASE,v"mkdir -p "$RCS_DIR"chmod 700 "$RCS_DIR"if [ ! -f "$RCS_FILE" ]; then ci -l "$FILE"else ci -u "$FILE" || true co -l "$FILE"fiexec nvi "$FILE"nvi protects the session; RCS protects the decision.Original post by @mwl@snac.bsd.cafe: https://io.mwl.io/@mwl/115814245521209100#nvi #RCS #Unix #SysAdmin #ConfigManagement

Today in #FreeSoftwareAdvent, I realized how much my daily setup changed over the years.I removed my external monitor and keyboard.Not to be minimalist, but to reduce context switching.I kept the mouse because speed still matters.Working sometimes from my parents house made it clear that relying on an external monitor was fragile, so I forced myself to work only with the laptop.The same thing happened with software.Vim slowly became nvi.Alacritty became xterm, then st.I didn’t look for lighter tools, but for ones I could trust and reason about. Less abstraction, fewer surprises.Today I use two identical laptops -- one for work, one personal -- same setup, side by side, one mouse for each.The environment disappears, and the work stays.#suckless #st #nvi #xterm

Still using nvi on Slackware.No plugins. No syntax highlighting. Just speed, predictability, and classic vi behavior, even with multi-GB files.I wrote a short guide explaining why nvi still matters and how its architecture enables fast, low-memory editing.📄 https://4c6e.xyz/code_notes.html (NVI Editor Guide)📄 https://git.sr.ht/~r1w1s1/code-notes/blob/main/notes/NVI_Editor_Guide.txt (plain text)#slackware #editor #nvi #vi #unix #minimalism