Re: [Nmh-workers] Ditch autoconf selection of pager?

[chad]

On 14 Jan 2013, at 14:05, Paul Fox <address@hidden> wrote:

> ken wrote:
>> 
>> Ok, this means I get to ask a question of greybeards that I've always
>> wondered about.
>> 
>> What is the deal with VISUAL and EDITOR?  I always set EDITOR; I've never
>> set VISUAL.  I've never understood what the difference is.  I'm fine with
>> making the hierarchy Editor: -> $VISUAL -> $EDITOR (and I think a default
>> of 'vi' is fine), but I've always wondered why there are two environment
>> variables.
> 
> not all terminals were capable of doing the cursor addressing needed
> for any given screen-oriented editor.  so the user was given the ability
> to configure two editors -- likely "ed" and "vi", though some folks may
> have used emacs or "se" :-).  some programs had separate commands for
> invoking the two.  (for instance, see ~e and ~v in the mailx man page.)

I used one of these regularly, with mh, on a Palm V with an early
cellular modem, around 1998-2000 or so.  I really doubt there are
people doing this any more.

As a matter of practical old-fogey-ness, I wonder if people regularly
use nmh on systems where vi isn't vim.

~Chad