>That behaviour may be _useful_, but the inconsistency between it and
>the behaviour of other system-administration utils that use editing
>makes it stupid.

Having to kill an install script and restarting it, in order to change
editors from a non-present vi to ed is not going to make anyone any
friends.  Specially if it invovles rebooting from slow console media
like tk50s or tu58s. Ugh.


Soo....  perhaps an answer that would keep everyone happy is to link
or symlink vi -> ed on install and miniroot disks?   That avoids
cgd's objection.  I, for one, would be thoroughly mystified if I
invoked "vi" (or had a program invoke it on my behalf), and the
tty appeard to hang.  Remember that ed has no prompt...

Or if that's too gross or confusing, how about changing install
scripts to check for the presence of vi, and if not found,
setting EDITOR=ed in install scripts?

Maybe the really best solution for the installation environment is a
two-line "vi" script that prints "no vi present, using ed instead" to
stderr, and then invokes ed.