VI

[Curtis Jensen]

Historicaly, one of the major advantages to vi is that vi uses a basic
set of keyboard characters.  No F? keys, no Ctrl, no Alt, no Home, etc. 
It managed to do this without losing any functionality.  Now days this
isn't as useful (at least not for the same reasons).  In the past, when
terminal communication wasn't as standard, not every terminal sent it's
special characters in the same way.  Further more, not every keyboard
had the same control keys.  For example, not everyone had F? keys, and
if they did they might have only had 10 of them not 12.  So, vi was able
to be used on any platform, as long as you had the standard typewritter
keys.  It origanly gained a large user base because of this. 
Fortunatly, vi has survived even with the advent of fancy text editors.

-- 
Curtis Jensen
cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu
http://www-bioeng.ucsd.edu/~cjensen/
FAX (425) 740-1451