[TUHS] vi in cooked mode?

[Dave Horsfall]

On Fri, 4 Nov 2022, Theodore Ts'o wrote:

> Yeah, same here, although my start was with the editor that came with 
> the PDP-8 disk operating system (using an ASR-35), the PDP-15's 
> foreground/background system (using a KSR-33), and the PDP-11's RT-11 
> running under TSX-plus (using VT-100's and DECwriter for the console).

I started off with TECO on RT-11; talk about cryptic...

> So when I finally got a chance to use Unix when I got to college, 
> /bin/ed was so similar to the line oriented editors I had used on the 
> various Digital systems I had a chance to use while growing up and in 
> high school, I never bothered to use vi.  It was either ed or emacs, 
> depending on how loaded the time-sharing systems I was using in my 
> freshman year.

Shortly after I switched to "ed" on the 11/40 someone brought out "em" 
(editor for mortals) which was sort of a screen editor: I recall saying 
"what a stupid command name" as it was only a fumble away from "rm" :-(

> Of course, once I had a chance to use a Vaxstation or the IBM PC/RT all 
> to myself, I jumped over to emacs and never looked back --- except when 
> I was recovering a system in single user mode, of course.

A boss of mine insisted that everyone had to learned "ed", because after a 
system crash it might be the only editor available; that, or having to 
dial in over a slow modem.

-- Dave