The VI editor (old)

[Mark Terribile]

I found something that might be relevant to this
old question:

> I have trouble using vi and vim under freebsd,
> under linux red hat it  was working perfect. The
> trouble is that the arrow-keys doesn't work  when
> I'm in insert mode. I have heard that it's important
> to use the right terminalprogram. In vim it's ok
> with the fancy swedish letters with dots over, but
> the arrow-keys doesn't work. 

In the FAQ for  nvi  (which is sitting in
/usr/src/contrib on my machine; I can't actually
swear that's its true home) I find

Q: My cursor keys don't work when I'm in text input
mode!
A: A common problem over slow links is that the
 set of characters sent by the cursor keys don't
 arrive close enough together for vi to understand
 that they are a single keystroke, and not separate
 keystrokes.  Try increasing the value of the
 escapetime edit option, which will cause vi to wait
 longer before deciding that the <escape> character
 that starts cursor key sequences doesn't have any
 characters following it.

Obviously, on the system console you are not going
over a slow link ... but if vim is interpreting a
generated escape sequence and not the actual keycodes
(what's the proper term?) there are several places
where mode settings might be screwing you up.

BTW, I use  nvi  as my  vi  and the arrow keys work
in insert mode.  I don't know if it will work for you,
since you are using an extended character set, but
you might like to try it.  It allows you to open
multiple files, move files to an internal background,
etc.

                                      Mark Terribile


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