formatting text from within vi

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On 2006-02-11 13:46, David Banning <david+dated+1140115561.27b268 at skytracker.ca> wrote:
> I am familiar with the !}fmt used in vi to reformat a paragraph, but
> I wondered how, or if it is possible to do more complex formatting.
>
> I am thinking specifically of numbering, or creating points. I am familiar
> with the
>
> .AL
> .LI
> point 1
> .LI
> point 2
> .LE
>
> that can be run with "nroff -mm", but I notice that it can not be run
> successfully with, say "!}nroff -mm"  from within vi.

For simpler numbering of lines, you can use }!nl

Or even !}cat -n

For more complex formatting, I usually resort to the block-editing
features or editors/vim-lite or to Emacs, which is my favorite :)