[GSoC] About the idea: Unicode support in vi

[Gary Kline]

On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 06:49:24AM -0500, Zhihao Yuan wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 6:11 AM, Bernd Walter <ticso at cicely7.cicely.de> wrote:
> >
> 
> Let clean up the my points:
> 1. ex-vi is POSIX vi compatible, and it supports mbyte encodings. But
> there are lots of work need to be done if we want to use it to replace
> the current nvi in the base system;
> 2. nvi does not use iconv, nvi-m17n only supports limited non-Unicode
> mbyte encodings, nvi-devel has too many problems. So we don't have a
> nvi which comes with fully mbyte enconding support;
> 3. Since other textproc tools, even include ed, support mbyte
> encodings, we do need a improved nvi;
> 4. Maybe compared with other kernel related GSoC proposals, this one
> seems to be easier. But on the other hand, the goal is useful, and the
> scale of the goal gives it more chance to become really useful.
> 
> It that reasonable?
> 
> -- 
> Zhihao Yuan
> The best way to predict the future is to invent it.


	it makes sense to upgrade nvi rather that ex-vi ... for reasons
	prev'ly mentioned.  talking about space/memory and even
	processor speed seems like a non-issue.  i would like to be able
	to be editing a file with vim [[ for WHATEVER reason ]] and pick
	up or resume editing the same file with nvi.  

	Of course there are dozens of alley-ways and twists and turns
	we all can get into is arguing this-and-that  about the
	fine-grained details.  It boils down to an issue of usefulness--
	as i see it.  be nice to have a "feature for feature, bug for
	bug" clone of vi that nvi used to claim to be.  again: have nvi
	and vim be interchangable.   oh: and then give the new nvi to
	the linux guys and let then deal with any port or build issues. 


> 

-- 
 Gary Kline  kline at thought.org  http://www.thought.org  Public Service Unix
           Journey Toward the Dawn, E-Book: http://www.thought.org
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