nvi for serious hacking

[Bruce R. Montague]

Hi, (wondering off on a tangent), re:

 > I was using screen oriented editors over a
 > 1200 baud dialup line in 1977 on a PDP-11 running RSTS/E on a Behive...

Around this time I think full-screen editors from    
DEC that took advantage of the VT-52 (and later
VT-100) included KED, EDT, and maybe SOS? EDT and
KED took good advantage of the alternate keypad,
basically the same keypad as on PC keyboards today.
Weren't there full-screen editors on PDP-8's before
this?

Doug Engelbart's NLS demo in 1968 may not qualify as
"available", but he demoed full-screen editing with
a mouse:

 http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/gui.ars/2


 "The demo featured hypertext linking, full-screen
 document editing, context-sensitive help, networked
 document collaboration, e-mail, instant messenging,
 even video conferencing!"

NLS ran on a version of UC Berkeley's Genie system,
which can be considered an ancestor of Unix (maybe
more-so than Multics?)

Although early versions of TECO may not have supported
direct-cursor addressing, TECO might have played
a role in popularizing the notion of full-screen
editors. From the wikipedia:

 "TECO became well-known following a DEC PDP-6
 implementation developed at MIT's Project MAC in
 1964. This implementation continuously displayed the
 edited text visually on a CRT screen, and was used
 as an interactive online editor. This was, however,
 neither its origin nor its originally intended mode
 of use. Later versions of TECO were capable of driving
 full-screen mode on various DEC RS232 video terminals."


 - bruce