It sounds like vi could use some support from it's users!  My sympathies to all
those who have yet to achieve enlightenment ;-).  There is no question about
the difficulty of learning vi (a difficulty, by the by, which is addressed in a
significant fashion in vim, which has a help facility).  Yet, once that
learning has been done, vi is incredibly fast and powerful as a program editor.
As y'all know, one must choose which optimizations to do and one of the
tradeoffs which often must be made is speed & efficiency vs. "hand-holding".
Vi went pretty much entirely for the former.

Ted (who uses happily both vi and Qedit every day)
--
Ted Ashton ([log in to unmask]), Info Serv, Southern Adventist University
          ==========================================================
This is not mathematics, it is theology.
[On being exposed to Hilbert's work in invariant theory.]
                                        -- Gordon, P