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View Poll Results: Which vi do you use?
original vi 10 19.23%
nvi 4 7.69%
vile 0 0%
elvis 0 0%
vim 34 65.38%
some other vi clone 0 0%
I don't use vi 4 7.69%
Voters: 52. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 18th September 2008
JMJ_coder JMJ_coder is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DrJ View Post
You can get nvi for Windows as part of UWin, the Unix-for-Windows package from (the former) Bell Labs. It has many useful tools, including a good ksh implementation. That makes sense, since it is David Korn's project.
Thanks. It didn't quite work for me as I hoped. The purpose was to have it on a flash jump drive that I could have for quickly editing files, if needed, at school - which is primarily Windows based. I got it on there, but it didn't really work 100% - it likes a static setup (ie, a Desktop) and not a portable one better. Plus, nvi didn't stand alone - it required the ksh to run. If I had a Windows setup here that I used all the time, that would be a different story.

So, I'll just use elvis that did install and work from the jump drive. It's primarily only for emergencies when I need a text editor and not for regular usage, so I'll deal with it.


But, thanks anyway - great link!
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Old 19th September 2008
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I thought you might run into that problem. UWin is not really meant to move a single program around: you do need all the libraries (and ksh) to make use of them. While you can probably set it up on a flash drive, it might take more effort than it is worth.

For a simple and occasional use of a vi-like editor, use whichever one you want.
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Old 21st September 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DrJ View Post
I thought you might run into that problem. UWin is not really meant to move a single program around: you do need all the libraries (and ksh) to make use of them. While you can probably set it up on a flash drive, it might take more effort than it is worth.

For a simple and occasional use of a vi-like editor, use whichever one you want.
Thanks. I ended up putting vim and elvis on the drive. If I was using Windows as my regular system (), I'd definitely work to get this installed. But as this is more-or-less for non-occasional editing (i.e., fix a pointer on an assignment due in this class), I think I can deal.
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Old 5th November 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BSDfan666 View Post
The results of this poll bring tears to my eyes.
I am sorry, I could not cast my vote on time and elevate little bit your mood. I am using nvi for absolutely everything. I caught myself recently even using ex. I could easily imagine myself just using ed if necessary.

I have not noticed the thread until now. I am rather surprised by the results of the voting. I am not surprised how many people like VIM. Lots of people need to work with Linux (occasionally even me). VIM also supports syntax highlighting which I guess could be useful if you can see the colours (I am
having hard time to see what other features of vim are useful and could not be reproduced in pure nvi with key strokes).

What is surprising to me is how many people claim to use original vi. First of all there are 3 different versions of original vi. One of them is certainly Solaris version which I used from 1996-2002. Does it mean that we have so many Solaris users around here? One of other two is a private copy if I recall correctly. I think that the third one is the copy shipped with V5.

I do have to admit though that Caldera have released now original version of vi that was shipped with V5 and I would guess that can be easily ported to any posix compliant system. (It is not ported to OpenBSD though).

Cheers,
OKO

Last edited by Oko; 6th November 2008 at 05:50 PM.
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Old 7th November 2008
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If you want something original - in terms of code - there you go: ftp://ftp.cs.tu-berlin.de/pub/bsd/Un...ons/Ritter_Vi/
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Old 7th November 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cabal View Post
If you want something original - in terms of code - there you go: ftp://ftp.cs.tu-berlin.de/pub/bsd/Un...ons/Ritter_Vi/
Or Heirloom project. My favourite source for original Unix goodies.

http://heirloom.sourceforge.net/index.html

By the way heirloom mailx formerly known as nail (still used under the same
name in OpenBSD) is in my point of view the best email client by a mile.
I am using it everyday for all my emails.
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Old 7th November 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Oko View Post
By the way heirloom mailx formerly known as nail (still used under the same
name in OpenBSD) is in my point of view the best email client by a mile.
I am using it everyday for all my emails.
I suspect that you, like me.. hate people who use HTML in email.
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Old 7th November 2008
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HTML email is so evil, It's all outlook's fault, It took me 5 minutes to figure out how to stop my outlook from sending HTML emails .. (I have to use outlook at work, exchange, and the !@# sysadmin won't enable IMAP :-()

I also understand why I get so many emails with an empty subject line, outlook doesn't even have a ``remind the user if the subject is empty'' feature(?!)

(I'm still figuring out how to use vim as an external editor.)

Woe is me!
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Old 8th November 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BSDfan666 View Post
I suspect that you, like me.. hate people who use HTML in email.
No, not really. I just ignore their emails.

Joking aside nail is ok with HTML cr*p as you can damp the html message into Lynx. What really annoys me are people who are sending email messages with Java Script. I recently had very unpleasant conversation
with one of the business that sends me periodic new letters (emails). I
worn them that if I ever receive an email in HTML form full of Java Script links that their email account would be forever blocked.
Guess what kind of messages I receive now from them Plain text
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Old 8th November 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Oko View Post
By the way heirloom mailx formerly known as nail (still used under the same
name in OpenBSD) is in my point of view the best email client by a mile.
I am using it everyday for all my emails.
Could you expound on why you think mailx is better than any other MUA - such as mutt (which I'm starting to use).
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Old 8th November 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JMJ_coder View Post
Could you expound on why you think mailx is better than any other MUA - such as mutt (which I'm starting to use).
Well the part of your answer is already given in your question. Mutt is only MUA. Originally could not even fetch mail. So you needed fetch mail package to do that part of job. In order to send the mail you had to configure sandmail as Mutt has no support for SMTP. That seems like overkill to me. SMTP support has been added in the past two years but is not stable. For a long time the developers of Mutt insisted that mutt is only MUA and they will not add SMTP support.

On another hand Nail is Mail on steroid with full MIME support. High quality simple code that does the ob right. It confers to Unix philosophy.
It means, it does only what it is support to do. If you need the editor to edit the mail you can call vi from nail. If you need to spell check you call ispell from within the vi. Allows you to send multiple attachments, receive them. You can pipe the things like HTML messages to lynx. In another words it is a very, very good Unix program that doesn't duplicate other functions. It is extremely easy to configure by editing .nailrc. It has imap and smtp support included. It supports TLS both on IMAP and SMTP side. You can do multiple accounts. It includes Bayesian junk mail filter. It is trivial to use any spam filter with it. Easily to manage many different boxes. Can display massages as threads. It is easy to embed into your web-applications. I could just go on and on. The tarball is also far smaller than Mutt.

Oh, did I say the classical Berkley Mail interface that I dig very much

That is being said I used Mutt mostly in order to help other people so I am
really strongly bias towards Nail. I have used for a long time Pine on various proprietary Unix-es so I could talk more about it.


Cheers,
OKO
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Old 8th November 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Oko View Post
Well the part of your answer is already given in your question. Mutt is only MUA. Originally could not even fetch mail. So you needed fetch mail package to do that part of job. In order to send the mail you had to configure sandmail as Mutt has no support for SMTP. That seems like overkill to me. SMTP support has been added in the past two years but is not stable. For a long time the developers of Mutt insisted that mutt is only MUA and they will not add SMTP support.
Wouldn't you consider doing MTA functions when they already exists with other programs (i.e., sendmail, fetchmail, etc.) to be going against the Unix philosophy? How is calling that functionality any different than invoking vi to edit messages or lynx to open HTML links?

Also, I'm a little confused - what is the relationship/differences with nail and mailx (which comes in the base system)?
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Old 8th November 2008
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'mail' was the default mail user agent on Unix afaik. Basically, it's the ed of MUA - you could use it on a typewriter without problem. Eventually 'mailx' came out, which was an improved version of it, which last I looked was what FreeBSD used for their /usr/bin/mail. A quick look on Google shows that nail is as OKO stated, mailx on steroids, or a "modern replacement for the ancient mailx" utility adding IMAP/SMTP support and what nots.


Personally I think a pure MUA that leaves everything but the most core elements of it to external programs is great design; but I find something that can at least send mail in isolation easier to work with, when hoping between different apps (mailx, mutt, kmail, thunderbird, webmails, etc).
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Old 9th November 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JMJ_coder View Post

Also, I'm a little confused - what is the relationship/differences with nail and mailx (which comes in the base system)?
Original Mail doesn't have MIME support (You can not send attachments for instance). Mailx is enhanced original Mail. In many popular Linux distros Mailx is actually Nail.

Last edited by Oko; 9th November 2008 at 05:42 AM.
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Old 9th November 2008
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Well I've been using UNIX since the early 90s (Irix), but together with elm only, I have to confess ;-) . Later pine, nowadays mutt. But as I'm using an Asus EEE900A with OpenBSD 4.4, maybe I will try nail too.
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Old 9th November 2008
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There's mailx (http://heirloom.sourceforge.net/mailx.html), which is like mailx but supports IMAP, MIME, SSL, etc.
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Old 9th November 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Carpetsmoker View Post
There's mailx (http://heirloom.sourceforge.net/mailx.html), which is like mailx but supports IMAP, MIME, SSL, etc.
What an unusual post from C.S.

This one used to be called nail, as mentioned above... which is entirely unrelated to this topic as well.

OpenBSD still calls heirloom mailx "nail".
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Old 9th November 2008
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Originally Posted by Carpetsmoker View Post
There's mailx (http://heirloom.sourceforge.net/mailx.html), which is like mailx but supports IMAP, MIME, SSL, etc.

So originally it was mail, then it was improved and was called mailx, then it was supposedly improved and renamed nail and now they are calling it mailx again. Is anyone else seeing stars on this merry-go-round?

What is the mailx that ships with *BSD today?
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Old 9th November 2008
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>Mailx command is based on BSD mail command, but it also provides some
enhanced features

http://www.freebsdsoftware.org/mail/mailx.html

It's not the best information, but at least some information

Addendum:

Maybe this sheds some light on the origin: http://heirloom.sourceforge.net/mailx_history.html
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Last edited by Oliver_H; 9th November 2008 at 09:49 PM.
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Old 10th November 2008
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Whoops, guess I smoked a carpet too many

What I meant was ``there heirloom mailx which is like mailx ...'' ... Guess I forgot a slightly critical word at a slightly strategic location.
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