Things that could be done to improve vi

[Keith Crews]

In article <89 at houligan.UUCP> dave at murphy.UUCP writes:
>My two cents' worth on the editor wars: although I'm not to get into the
>"my editor is better than your editor" thing (sounds like net.sport.baseball),
>I would like to see a couple of things in vi that would make it a little less
>frustrating to use in certain applications.  They are:
>
>1. An on-screen mode indicator, so that you know whether you're in a text
>entry mode or a command mode.  (Also, an indicator that would show whether
>or not you've made any changes to the current file would be nice.)
>
I like this and the rest of Dave's suggestions.  I would also add the
capability to display the last n keys typed.  This would be useful for
recovering from the inevitable errors of accidently typing garbage that
trashes the file but in some undetermined way.  For novices, displaying
this on the bottom line would be helpful.  For more experienced users, the
ability to have it displayed would be sufficient.