Learning to use the ex/vi editor and writing a novel with it

The first 10 pages or so of my sci-fi novel (14,684 characters) written using vi (not the first 10 pages of the entire novel; I'm currently at around 282).

I am enjoying the experience. It's very interesting to learn different ways to quickly navigate to a specific word in the text, as well as to edit and move text, and so on.

WritingWithVI.png
 
%pupil -sceptical said:
until you remember them
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Memory... that forgotten tool (the pun!). Thank you very much, friend, for you comprehensive answer. I now know what TeX/LaTex is, and I'm interested in it.

Crivens said:
"we so great" page
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🤣

freezr said:
AsciiDoctor
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Another interesting tool.

lgrant said:
He said that a reporter is going to polish their story until just before deadline
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That's like so many things that you don't finish, just abandon at some point.

bakul said:
TeXworks
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Another cool tool.

bakul said:
edit in nvi)
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Yes!

daridro said:
I still use (n)vi
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Yes!
 
DrJuanNadie said:
I'm learning ex/vi as deeply as I can (little by little) and it's fascinating how powerful the little program is.

I'm writing a novel, and yesterday I wrote for the first time using vi. Afterward I pasted the resulting fragment in MS Word, because my novel includes a complex index that you cannot create even with LibreOffice, but the writing experience was very satisfying. I'm using a "big" font on the terminal and the color combination that I prefer, which is dark grey over white, but the rest is vanilla ex/vi (with some options enabled, like line numbers and "showmode"). No mouse involved.

When I'm an expert in ex/vi, I'll think about using vim or neovim (or maybe I won't), but I'm enjoying very much the experience of learning the original in all its mighty.
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You may find these helpful:
- https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2024/09/23/ghost-in-the-shell-part-8-use-vi-editor/
- https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2024/03/13/perfect-neovim-ansible-setup/

... and about writing a book in vi(1) or vim(1) - try LaTeX - you focus on the content while LaTeX will take care about everything else - like index for example.

Check print/texlive-base for a start.
 
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