[net.unix] How to put comments in nroff/tro

phil@amd.UUCP (Phil Ngai) (08/13/84)

Speaking of ex/vi, the current issue of Unix/world has a very interesting
interview with Bill Joy and one of the things related is how he was
putting all kinds of wonderful things into vi like windows but their
new vax didn't have a tape drive, backups weren't done, and all the new
code got "scrunched" when the machine crashed. He was so discouraged
by this he gave up, write the documentation, and hasn't touched it since.

It sort of sounds like Mark Horton is responsible for much of the
success of vi, actually.
-- 
 amd70 is dead, tell a friend
 Phil Ngai (408) 982-6554
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ajs@hpfcla.UUCP (ajs) (08/15/84)

Incidentally,  you can put  comments  in your .exrc file by using  lines
that  begin  with a "  character.  You  would  not  need to do that if a
certain missing command syntax was built in.  You see, ":map" only takes
two arguments, the character to map and the sequence to map it to.  But,
if you look at the source, you  discover  that space was set aside for a
third field:  a description  field.  Some versions even call an internal
routine to predefine some mappings, and do set a description, e.g:

	:map
	up	^[A	k

Note the word "up".  You can't get that in there from a map command.

Alan Silverstein, hpfcla!ajs