Re: [Sheflug] Star Office - was NHS privatisation

[Alastair Donlon <nospam [at] netsoc.ucd.ie>]

On Mon, Nov 27, 2000 at 03:58:47PM +0000, Barrie Bremner wrote:
> >But, this is coming from someone who's only ever used SOffice under
> >extreme duress. Vi and latex are my friends. Quick, simple and
> >memory efficient.
> >
> >A.D.
> 
>  Oh, good... you can tell me how to use VI. I'm an emacs fan, and can't figure
> out man vi, let alone vi itself.
>  Unfortunately my OpenBSD boxen have vi at the moment.
> 
>  How do you edit, save, close and open files? I've figured out how to move and
> that's about it.
> 
>  Baz.
> 

Easy peasy, lemon squeezy:

First, make sure you're in control mode, by pressing Esc. The only problem
with using 'vi' a lot is that when you use other editors you quickly notice
that pressing 'Esc' whenever you stop typing is a reflex reaction and is
very difficult to stop doing.

To save a file, just do a ':w' in Control mode. ':wq' will save a file and
then quit, while ':q!' will quit without attempting to save the current
file at all.

':e <filename>' will open a file for editing. This will complain if the
current file hasn't been saved yet. To open a new file without saving
the current one, you want to do a ':e! <filename>'.

To add text to the file, all you have to do is to go into insert mode
	i - insert typed text before the current cursor position
	a - insert typed text after the current cursor position
Don't forget to press 'Esc' when you've finished inserting text.

Editing:
	s - typed text replaces current character.
	r - replace current character with a new one.
	x - delete the current character 
	dw - delete from the cursor to the end of the word, copy to buffer
	dd - delete the entire current line, copy to buffer
	D - delete text from cursor to end of line.
	cw - change the text from current cursor position to the end of
		the word. Typed text replaces the current word.
	C - typed text replaces text to end of current line.
	yy - copy current line to buffer
	yw - copy from cursor up to end of word to buffer
	p - place contents of buffer before cursor
	P - place contents of buffer after cursor

Searching:
	/<text>	- find next occurence of <text>
	?<text> - find previous occurenct of <text>
	n	- repeat last search operation

Oh yeah, and don't forget '.' is very useful. It means 'repeat the
last command.

That's mostly  just a selection of some of the 'vi' commands I use
most commonly. I haven't even touched on the 'search & replace' commands, but
I'm sure that's enough to start with. The man page is useless, but the
O'Reilly books I've seen are good introductions, and I keep a copy of the
"vi Editor: Pocket Reference" nearby at all times.

A.D.
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