[GSoC] About the idea: Unicode support in vi

[Pan Tsu]

Zhihao Yuan <lichray at gmail.com> writes:

> If you really want to use vi in a 32MB mem environment, the ex-vi may
> make sense. It consumes 1600KB memory while nvi consumes 2000KB. Note
> that the ee editor uses same amount memory as ex-vi.

ex-vi memory usage can be reduced a bit, e.g. by ~20% if you drop
  -DLISPCODE -DCHDIR -DFASTTAG -DUCVISUAL -DMB -DBIT8
in particular multibyte support.

> So basically, if no one disagree that we can drop the infinite undo,
> multiple buffer, multiple window and some other potential missing
> features, we can replace the nvi in the base system with ex-vi.

If the intent is to make all interactive editors in base unicode aware
then I wonder if you can use similar excuse when window(1) was kicked
out but for missing features, i.e. use ports.

As for other editors, ed(1) seems to support editing UTF-8. I've used it
to read/edit cyrillic and CJK texts in single user mode before found out
about ex-vi. And ee(1)... why not add unicode support there as a GSoC?