From the course: Learning vi

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Using vi in a terminal emulator window

Using vi in a terminal emulator window - vi Tutorial

From the course: Learning vi

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Using vi in a terminal emulator window

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When vi was originally written, a terminal was a piece of hardware. It had a fixed number of characters, typically 80 characters across and 24 or 25 lines down. And you couldn't just change it. So vi was written with the idea that its terminal was not going to change around it. But in modern Unix systems, you're almost always going to be using vi in a terminal emulator window, like the one you see here. There are a few special considerations when you are using vi in a terminal emulator. So, let's edit, just for an example, the Purloined Letter file that we have here. So, here we are in vi. And vi thinks it's running in a terminal that's 95 characters across and 24 lines down. Something that you can do with a terminal emulator that you can't do with a physical terminal, is you can scroll it. If you grab the scroll bar, or if you use the scroll wheel on your mouse, you can actually scroll vi out of view. Now, vi doesn't know that it's out of view. One thing that you can do if you find…

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