On Thu, Nov 3, 2022 at 3:44 PM Diomidis Spinellis <dds@aueb.gr> wrote:

> Was I misled?  Was there perhaps a hacked version of vi that worked in this
> way?
>
I think you may be mixing a few stories ... and features ...


v6 vs v7 PDP-11 vs Vax much less vi vs emacs.
Some thoughts ...

1.) Emacs came from CMU and only a few years later after the Vax had was
stable (post 4.1BSD)
2.) emacs was not so much prohibited as it was slow, it needed megabytes of
memory -- that was limit.
3.) By the time emacs comes on the scene, workstations are showing up, so
you did not have 20 students on a vax to UCB.
4.) Raw mode was a V6 feature for PDP-11, by the time of the Vax the TTY
was using V7 using CBREAK (1/2 cooked) which still allows canonicalization

ᐧ