Bluefish HTML editor

[Longman, Bill]

> Well, the learning curve is famously steep, and I'm only a 
> little way up it.
> But I'm far enough to get whiffs of the power that is reputed to lie
> hidden behind that confusing, unhelpful initial screen of tildes.

I have to nit-pick, sorry, Tobey. A steep curve is what you want: lots of
learning in a very short time. That's a steep slope. Vi has a "long"
learning curve. It's shallow. After editing umptyfive hundred documents, I
still find commands that I can use.

> There are some great tips at vim.org which make getting 
> started a little
> less confusing.
<snip>
> I think there is some truth in this, and getting familiar with vim has
> definitely also helped me feel more comfortable at the command line.

Another good thing about learning vi is that I can't remember seeing any
*nix system that didn't have it. When you're comfortable with vi, you can
get on just about any system and get your .profile set up.

Here are some of my favorite keys:

T - go to TOP of screen
M - go to MIDDLE of screen
L - go to LOW of screen (bottom)
G - go to the very last line of the document (GO!? I dunno.)

z [Enter] - put current line at the top of the screen
z - - [that's z-dash] put current line at bottom of screen

You probably already know these:

Ctrl-F - move forward a page
Ctrl-B - move backward a page

but you can (like most commands) put a number before it:

10[Ctrl-F] moves ahead 10 pages.

That's why I like this command to go to column number 72:

72|

Sorry...too many years at the shell prompt...I have to share....