@dabeaz

That is #vi as well … https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/vi.html

@ratsnakegames

No, it doesn't. As I said, I'm talking about the original Notepad. And that gained significantly simply by having a better keyboard than a Model F XT or AT and better graphics than CGA. It was basic things like SVGA graphics being able to display more characters on the screen with the same font sizes; dedicated editing keys; and Windows's ability to set a colour palette. Even just in its original form, it got more usable.

Whereas there were no similar gains to be had by solely running Joy+Horton #vi on better hardware. So the Notepad experience got better as the years went by, whilst the Joy+Horton vi experience stayed the same. What began as a huge step up became less and less so.

The Joy+Horton vi experience was not as good as running the clones in their 'vi' modes now might lead one to believe. To step up from Notepad, one really had to go with the vi clones. Or Qedit, T, T2, E, EPM, The Semware Editor, Brief, Boxer, and suchlike.

@cstross @davep

@ratsnakegames

Back then, on balance yes. I've used Joy+Horton #vi (and #STEVIE, and #nvi) and original Notepad. The former on a 300 BPS terminal largely outdid Notepad on an old CGA IBM PC.

But better graphics hardware and a PS/2 keyboard improve Notepad, whereas Joy+Horton vi would still even today be doing things like displaying just an '@' symbol when a line was too long, or not updating following text during an insert operation, or just not accepting cursor keys.

People tend to have forgotten how much we got, like multi-level undo/redo, line wrap truncation, editing during insert, and even a help system, with the clones.

@cstross @davep