@remotenemesis

To answer the question in the title:
History of Vim

I used to us Vi on HPUX (Hewlett Packard Unix) systems ,so when Vim appeared on the Amiga it was great. Note that even though Vim stands fo VI Improved, it wasn't actually derived from the Vi source as At&t had the rights to that. It was based on the Stevie editor source code, which was a ground up re-write of the Vi editor for the AtariST in order to get around the licensing issues with Vi. Vim was freeware so it got ported to pretty much everything.

I actually lived that history, which gives you an idea of how old I am.

Fun fact, the old HPUX systems used to be based on the 68k line of processors. Many people in the Hewlett Packard R&D lab used to own Amigas in the mid 80's. Those were the days....now I'm sounding old.

Last edited by ktadd on 07-Aug-2023 at 09:24 PM.

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Kevin - X1000 First Contact / uA1

On Linux, Vim is one of many vi clones available. Debian and Debian based distros such as Ubuntu and its many spin-offs use a system they call “alternatives” and on them, once a vi clone is installed, /usr/bin/vi is established as a symlink to /etc/alternatives/vi which is a symlink yo whichever vi clone is currently chosen.

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So vim must have replaced vi.

Very few, if any at all, use original “vi” - vi and ex became posix standards and was implemented over and over many time. nvi, elvis, vim, busybox…


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Emacs was included with AmigaOS.

No, MEmacs, aka MicroEmacs was - NOT Emacs.

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As well as the Ed text editor.

Inherited from Tripos, iirc.

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Edit is the official Amiga line editor. I don't know how popular it was. I found it too limited and awkward being stuck on one line so stuck with Ed from then on and only ran Edit by accident.

Clearly you don’t know how to use edit then, I use it every day. It’s not an editor you use to manually edit files, it takes two arguments - the file to edit, and the file with the commands you wish to apply to edit the file opened. It’s meant to be used in scripts or CLI to edit for example output from commands.

Last edited by kolla on 08-Aug-2023 at 07:15 PM.

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@kolla

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Very few, if any at all, use original “vi” - vi and ex became posix standards and was implemented over and over many time. nvi, elvis, vim, busybox…

What comes to mind is any copyright issues calling it the same.

It's not a port. It's taking the same name and making a copy. Well back at the time it was copied.

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No, MEmacs, aka MicroEmacs was - NOT Emacs.

So not even an official cut down version. Again using the same name in different form. It seems the FOSS software world is full of rip offs.

By comparison, the Amiga world looks lazy. The most well known example would be SoundTracker and ProTracker. Where they didn't even create their own FOSS version and name it similar but instead reverse engineered commercial binary code and reassembled it with modifications. Today that would be a law suit.

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Inherited from Tripos, iirc.

I know it can be looked down on because it's not the CAOS we were meant to have but I kind of like the Tripos in AmigaDOS. It does have it's short comings though. No command can do a simple mount. Scripting lacks basic functions and basic maths skills. But I found Ed OK for doing small edits to startup files.

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Clearly you don’t know how to use edit then, I use it every day. It’s not an editor you use to manually edit files, it takes two arguments - the file to edit, and the file with the commands you wish to apply to edit the file opened. It’s meant to be used in scripts or CLI to edit for example output from commands.

No, because when I started, I was using it in OS1.3 on an A500 so didn't have a use case for it. Also, the only other edit I would know about would be MSDOS edit, which was a full editor so the name looked confusing. But before then I'd never had a computer with an editor, just my C16, with BASIC interpreter. Edit looks somewhat similar to what sed does. Except being in the Amiga way needs commands inside a file rather than take them direct.

Last edited by Hypex on 10-Aug-2023 at 06:05 AM.

@Hypex

Copyrights? You mean trademarks? On unix common command names? You’re joking.

And FOSS?

This is UNIX we are talking about here, they are/were typically neither free nor open source.

Ripoffs?

vi is POSIX standard - anyone following an industry standard is “ripping off”?
Would you call the Roadshow IP stack a BSD ripoff? Because it really is! Not like “dir”, “delete”, “list” etc are unique amiga commands.

Emacs isn’t an editor, just like vi it’s a standard, and there’s a whole family of emacs like editors, some with “emacs” in the name, many not.

No command can do a simple mount? What, C:Mount cannot?

AmigaShell lacks not basic functions, it lacks functions. For math you have C:Eval.

C:Ed is quite powerful once you bother to configure it properly, and you can customize its menus.

Edit is not like sed, as the s in sed is “stream” and Edit doesn’t do streams. Luckily for is, Amiga celebrity Thomas Richter, made a native Amiga stream editor also named SED (ripoff!!!!111)

Unix vi (and especially vim) can do the same that Amiga Edit does and take commans from external file.

Last edited by kolla on 11-Aug-2023 at 03:05 AM.

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@kolla

Trademarks would fit but copyright would be closer to what I'm thinking.

You highlighted my point with your statement about UNIX being neither free nor open source.

UNIX is unclear as it's not commercial like Windows and sold to consumers but licensed to companies. So has a different commercial model and not exactly sold on the shelf at the local computer shop. On top of this there is also open source variants. And even some Linux distros have been licensed as a UNIX. It's more confusing than trying to explain what AmigaOS, AROS and MorphOS is!

If "vi" is a standard there is "vim" which copied it to be better. But vi is the original coding and vim is a copy. So my issue here is a binary was copied and or cloned and then added to. It's not exactly like yad being a fork of zenity where fork implies using the original code base. Or an official game port based on re-implementing on different platform with original assets also called a conversion. A game copy, that we see today, isn't a port or conversion but would be a cover version.

This article also talks about vim being ported to an obscure OS like Amiga. It must be obscure. If vim was created on it. I don't know when Memacs was included with Amiga. But this guy has a bias against it.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/vim-update-classic-unix-linux-editor-gets-first-update-in-years/

As to Roadshow, I was under the impression it was ported to AmigaOS, as it would be an immense work to create a TCP/IP stack from scratch. But Roadshow follows the Amiga API TCP/IP standard. And also doesn't include standard TCP command set like ifconfig and the like but custom commands. Always thought ifconfig was confusing as if it was named after "if" the "config" existed. So, ifconfig then what?

C:Mount on Amiga, no it cannot do a simple mount. It needs all the details in the MountList; aka fstab style, or in a DOSDriver; aka fstab.d/ style. You cannot do a simple one line mount with C:Mount, you need to setup a file first, with all the technical details. On Linux you can enter a one liner and it can mount, especially if can determine filesystem itself, like for a CDROM. On Amiga, partitioned devices aren't mapped by the kernel or DOS like in Linux. So the device details, including low and high blocks, need to be specified as well as file system details. It's harder to mount on Amiga!

The AmigaDOS script functionality are skipping to a label. Which then needs to skip back. Lacking even the basics of a GOSUB. But Eval is a command, not a built in, so awkward to do maths with. A few of these things should have been updated with OS4 but they left most of it the way it was. And instead polluted C: with foreign commands and added Python.

I mostly use C:Ed from boot shells for quick editing. It's basic use is easy to memorise. It reminds me of nano which is my go to on Linux from reading so many lines using it online.

But for MSDOS, to compare, EDIT is fairly specific. I don't know if there is an "EDIT" standard. But it's a certified DOS classic. I don't know if anyone made a non DOS "ripoff. There was the abominable MacDOS but I don't know if included an EDIT clone.

Last edited by Hypex on 23-Aug-2023 at 02:35 PM.

@Hypex

With “standards” I mean specifications - not binaries.

This is vi:

https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/vi.html

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@remotenemesis

I became familiar with Vim in 2019.

Back in my A2000HD days, I used a different editor.




redfox

Last edited by redfox on 26-Aug-2023 at 12:04 AM.
Last edited by redfox on 25-Aug-2023 at 06:51 PM.
Last edited by redfox on 25-Aug-2023 at 06:25 PM.

@fishy_fis

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It pretty much is common knowledge.

No it isn't.
Knowing esoteric funfacts about where a particular 3rd-party software was first developed is not part of "knowing a platform".

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Unfortunately though the average amiga fan/user these days seems to have a surprisingly small knowledge of the machine. Its bizarre really. How the heck have so many people followed something for decades, yet remained pretty ignorant to it? Even weirder is that many of these more or less clueless people will defend it to the end of the Earth..... to each his own, but it's downright batty to get so passionate about something you don't even know.

You love the platform because it behaves the best and have many great tricks and features no other platform has. Because you know how it works (for you when you use it) and behaves, and you like it. NOT because some awkward tool you never used was developed on it 100 years ago. Claming so is just stupid.

Considering the vaste amount of events, people and software that was involved and happening around Amiga since some of us had just learned to walk, its impossible to know it all, and not interesting to know it all.

I love the Amiga (OS) for how it and its programs behave. Not because of its history, that's just deadend nostalgia.
(who the fukk cares about vim anyway, and all the ther crap I have no idea about....)

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Once again a parallel with religion rears it's ugly head.

By your arguments, I agree totally! Just your arguments doesn't hold water for why people argue for this platform.

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- Don't get fooled by my avatar, I'm not like that (anymore, mostly... maybe only sometimes)
> Amiga Classic and OS4 developer for OnyxSoft.

We love Amiga for all the ports of old PC games, the awesome chunky graphics we get with P96, the trouble free audio we get with AHI, the superb Internet capabilities, super fast I/O and rock solid filesystems. Right?

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