Date:        Tue, 23 Apr 2002 18:41:24 -0400
    From:        "Jeff Flowers" <jeffrey@jeffreyf.net>
    Message-ID:  <000a01c1eb17$fffb77d0$4ec8b142@gamma>

  | 2. Would someone be kind enough to answer a vi history question for me? I
  | was under the impression that Bill Joy created vi at Berkley, and that it
  | was part of BSD Unix. If this is so, then why isn't the vi included in the
  | BSDs the "original" vi?

The original vi (which Bill did write at Berkeley) was an add on to the
"ex" editor (still is, or should be) - that is, it was the "visual" command
in that editor (which also has/had "open", which is a kind of one line
editing mode - much easier to approximate on paper terminals).

"ex" was (I believe) a variant/extension of the "em" editor from QMC (or
the two just might have been similar in some respects, or ex may have just
borrowed some ideas from em).  Back in the 6th edition days there were
lots of editor variants around.

Both "em" and "ex" are/were extensions to the "ed" editor, that was the
standard unix editor, and was trade secret code (not to be released).

So, while "ed" was comparatively small, and "ex" (with "vi" included) quite
large, and quite a lot of what had been "ed" was gone from "ex" anyway,
there was still a core part of "ed" left buried in there, hence original
"vi" was not free to be distributed.

"ex" was on the 1BSD tape if I remember correctly - it had no "visual"
command in it then though (there was no "vi" command) - I think "vi" had
appeared by the time of the original 2BSD distributions, though it may
not have been possible to include it if you were using a non split I/D
PDP-11 (11/40 or the like).

The NetBSD "vi" is "nvi", which is pretty close to the original.   Forget
"vim", that's rubbish ("improved" indeed!)

kre