From: janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com   
      
   On 11/16/25 10:01, Eli the Bearded wrote:   
   > In comp.editors, Janis Papanagnou replied to me:   
   >> [ Sorry for the response per email, Eli. - I'm not used to my   
   >>     new system environment, and it's not yet set up completely. ]   
   >   
   > Usenet is not realtime. Slow is fine. Not necessary to post and email a   
   > response, and doing so without mentioning it is annoying.   
      
   (I want to discuss things here _in Usenet_ not per email. The   
   prior sent mail was a GUI-typo accident with the new software!   
   Sorry again if I've annoyed you.)   
      
   >> ...   
   >   
   > Modelines change settings in your editor. When a modeline comes from a   
   > file you didn't write, the changes may be unpleasant. [...]   
      
   Yes, you're right that files may come from third-party sources.   
      
   >   
   >>> Like I said, I've been using vim 9 for a while and don't notice   
   >>> differences. I prefer a mostly vi compatible vim experience, however.   
   >> Curious about 'compatible'...   
   >> As I understand it you don't get any Vim feature with that?   
   >> So you're actually just using old "Vi" functionality? (With   
   >> Vi's old bugs fixed, I suppose.)   
   >   
   > No. Compatible means that most everything vi does, [...]   
   > [...] But things that would be no-ops, errors or   
   > undefined behavior in vi, those can still work vim-style.   
      
   Ah, okay.   
      
   >   
   > Some notable examples that I use regularly:   
   >   
   >   * The g family of commands, like gq to reformat text. The   
   >     "g" key is unassigned in vi   
      
   Yes. A very huge and diverse family, actually.   
      
   A similar (previously unused and IMO useful) letter-family   
   is 'v', 'V', Ctrl-'V'.   
      
   >   * Similarly ctrl-a / ctrl-x number increment / decrement   
      
   Occasionally it's useful. - Mind surprises, though, e.g. when   
   trying to increment the month or day component of an ISO date!   
   (Been there.)   
      
   But very useful also if you want to add a certain offset, say 7,   
   to many fields, '7' 'Ctrl-A' then move to other places and just   
   repeat (with '.').   
      
   >   * Whole word search with # and * (but I remap the * to _)   
      
   I'm sure I've used '#' in Vi (in pre-Vim era). And someone in   
   Usenet mentioned that '*' was also present in Vi. (The latter   
   was new to me.) Maybe it's been added over the course of time.   
      
   > [...]   
   >> [...]   
   >   
   > There are many Bram extensions I don't get a lot of value from,   
   > like vimscript,   
      
   I do no scripting in Vim.   
      
   > syntax highlighting,   
      
   This is something I consider very useful to get a quick overview   
   of the text structure. It also catches lexical and some types of   
   syntax errors.   
      
   > gvim, mouse integration,   
      
   All that mouse-clicky-clacky things severely reduces editing speed;   
   the primary domain of Vi/Vim achieved with the keyboard.   
      
   I use Gvim occasionally if some GUI application asks me for a text   
   viewer to select; vim terminal versions typically don't work here.   
      
   > and colors in my editor (eg search highlighting).   
      
   I'm ambivalent here; it's useful but the way it's implemented isn't   
   very appealing in some cases.   
      
   > But there are good things too, as I mentioned above. [...]   
      
   Yes, indeed.   
      
   Janis   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)