The following "what is" was obtained from WhatIs.com.
vi is a widely-used and popular UNIX-based text editor. Like most UNIX system interfaces and other text editors, it lets you control the system by using the keyboard rather than a combination of mouse selections and keystrokes. The succinctness of the interface makes it highly useful for people who work at a computer all day, especially programmers entering or manipulating language statements. vi was invented before and is a popular alternative to emacs, a more capable, more complicated, and somewhat slower text editor. Like emacs, vi is most commonly used for entering and editing program language statements and for writing short notes including email. vi comes as part of any UNIX-based system. UNIXhelp.Ed.ac.uk:: Text Editors
RootPrompt.org:: Vi Tutorial
THomer.com:: Vi Lovers Home Page
Wikibooks.org:: Learning the vi editor
FreeBSD.org:: An Introduction to Display Editing with Vi by Bill Joy
VIM.org:: vim is vi improved.
Vim has been ported to numerous computing platforms and it is distributed for free as charityware.GDT::Speaks:: About Emacs
Author: Gerald D. Thurman
[gthurman@gmail.com]
Created: 12 Oct 2002
Last Modified: Saturday, 05-Jan-2013 11:15:49 MST