From: Walter Alejandro Iglesias <wai@roquesor.com>
Subject: Re: Improvement for vi(1) paste comand (updated diff)
To: tech@openbsd.org
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2026 20:21:07 +0100

I'm going to clarify a couple of points to the list in general to avoid
further pointless arguments.

First of all *none said this is a bug*.  As the subject says, it's an
*improvement*.  As I explained several times, the idea came from here:

  https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=174551571311274&w=2

In addition to implementing the change in cursor mode, I thought it
convenient to use the same criteria in line mode.

Knowing how people are, I knew beforehand that many were going to
protest.  I dared to propose it anyways taking the following into
account:

Vi is 49 years old, Vim is 33 years old, NVi is 18 yeas old.  Today, Vim
is undoubtedly the most popular.  With both, 'p' and 'P' character mode
pasting, vim does with the cursor *the opposite* of what nvi does.  And
neither vim nor nvi do what the original vi did.  If we take into
account what each shell does with edit mode, the diversity increases.
How many times you heard someone complaining about or even mentioning
any of this along all these years?

Indeed, I'm not asking anyone to relearn how to play the violin with
their feet.


-- 
Walter