Re: vi mode question.

[Bart Schaefer <schaefer@brasslantern.com>]

Anyone who knows vi(m) will already know this, but for Ray et al.:

The "insert mode" in vi is for exactly that and only that:  inserting
new text.  You can backspace over mistakes to erase them but you can't
move back and forth over words or lines to make other kinds of changes.

"Command mode" has to be entered (by pressing the ESC key) any time you
want to move around or do any kind of complex editing.  While in the
command mode, you can copy and paste text, but not insert brand new
text (to do that you have to drop back into insert mode again).

You might be fooled by the illusion that arrow keys or page up/down seem
to work in insert mode, but really what those keys are doing is leaving
insert mode to enter command mode, moving the cursor, and then dropping
back into insert mode at the new location.

Emacs is "modeless" which basically means it is in command mode all the
time, except that one of the possible commands is for the most recent
key press to insert itself at the current cursor position.

Either editor could mimic the basic functions of the other (in fact for
the first few years that I used emacs, I used it only with the "evi"
emulator), but that becomes increasingly difficult for the specialized
features.