editors/ex 20040103nb4 NetBSD

The Traditional Vi Source Code for Modern Unix Systems

The vi editor is one of the most common text editors on Unix. It was developed starting around 1976 by Bill Joy at UCB, who was tired of the ed editor. But since he used ed as a code base, access to the original sources has required a Unix Source Code License for more than twenty years. In January 2002, Caldera was so kind to remove usage restrictions to the Ancient Unix Code by a BSD-style license (see the announcement at Slashdot) and thus vi is now finally free.

Compared to most of its many clones, the original vi is a rather small program (~120 KB code on i386) just with its extremely powerful editing interface, but lacking fancy features like multiple undo, multiple screens or syntax highlighting. In other words, it is a typical Unix program that does exactly what it should and nothing more. I intend to preserve this style in maintaining my port, except for changes to achieve POSIX.2 standards compliance, features in the SVr4 versions of vi, and, of course, bug fixes.