


VILE -- VI Like Emacs: a vi workalike put together from Micro-Emacs by Paul Fox
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

	This editor grew out of a frustration that although lots of
	eager programmers have tackled rewrites of Emacs, with new and
	better features (not to mention free source), I've not seen
	anything similar done with the Second True Editor.  (The
	First, of course, being /bin/ed)

	So I took a copy of MicroEmacs 3.9 (which I've since
	discovered was out of date, unfortunately) and turned it
	into a vi "feel-alike".  It retains the multiple
	buffer/multiple window features of uemacs, but the
	"finger-feel", if you will, is very much that of vi.  It is
	definitely not a clone, in that some substantial stuff is
	missing, and the screen doesn't look quite the same.  But what
	matters most is that one's "muscle memory" does the right thing
	to the text in front of you, and that is what vile tries to do
	for vi users.   THIS IS NOT A "CLONE"!  But it feels good.
	(Put another way, the things that you tend to type over and
	over probably work -- things done less frequently, like configuring
	a .exrc file, are quite different.)

	This is the second really public realease of vile.  Users of
	previous versions will hopefully find many new features -- see the
	CHANGES file for details.

	The collective developers of Micro-Emacs should be
	complimented that the changes were as easy as they were.  The
	code was pretty clean and well designed before I started on
	it.  I'm not sure that the same can be said anymore... 

	The benefits over standard vi include:
		- multiple files open at once
		- multiple windows on the screen
		- a larger set of operator commands
		- the possibility of porting to your favorite micro.
		- more uniform undo/yank register treatment
		- using tags doesn't lose your last search pattern
		- "next error" cursor positioning after compilation
	Of course, it _may_ lack some of vi's reliability. :-)

	Take a look at vile.hlp for more information about features
	and differences. 

	In general, I suspect that the quality of the code is roughly
	on a par with MicroEmacs.  I've been using vile regularly under
	both SunOS and 386 UNIX for almost two years, with no major problems
	(that havn't been fixed).  Version three was built and used by
	many others on the net, and their feedback was invaluable.
	I think all of the reported bugs have been fixed, and hopefully
	not too many new ones introduced.

	I have not tried this on a small system, or even _any_ non-UNIX 
	system.  Pete Rusczinski has done an excellent job of porting
	version three to DOS -- unfortunately his changes are not
	incorporated here as yet.

	Hope you enjoy -- 

	Paul G. Fox	June, 1991, and February, 1992
	pgf@cayman.com

p.s. By the way, I'm _not_ the same Paul Fox who wrote Crisp, the Brief
	work-alike.
