[GSoC] About the idea: Unicode support in vi

[Pan Tsu]

Zhihao Yuan <lichray at gmail.com> writes:

>> Why not just use "traditional vi"?
>>
>>   http://ex-vi.sourceforge.net/ (lives under editors/2bsd-vi)
>
> This one lacks of many feature, compared with nvi.

nvi also lacks some features, e.g. lisp, modelines, sourceany.
ex-vi is more lightweight

  # both built with DEBUG_FLAGS=-ggdb + mg(1) for reference

  $  du -Ah *
  1.9M    nvi
  556K    ex-vi
  505K    mg

  $ size *
     text    data     bss     dec     hex filename
   329080    1952    4528  335560   51ec8 nvi
   175675    5048  233024  413747   65033 ex-vi
   128570    9760   10184  148514   24422 mg

> I'm not sure whether the FreeBSD system administrators (who opens 100
> ssh sessions) agree with that to replace the nvi in base system with
> this one.

Do they expect more features beyond POSIX vi?

> However, it's source code can be a great reference for a mbyte-capable
> nvi.