xvi at sourceforge.net

by
Chris Downey
John Downey

Download XVI from sourceforge

Xvi is a portable multi-window version of the UNIX editor ‘vi’, derived from "STEVIE" in the 1980s.

The program was originally developed for the Atari ST, but has been ported to UNIX, MS-DOS, OS/2 and QNX as well. In spite of its name, there is, as yet, no X-Windows-specific version of it.

It uses text windows separated by horizontal status lines on character mode displays and the windows may represent different files being edited, or different views on to the same file.

Xvi is the vi clone with the smallest program size and memory use.

	Program size under x86 Linux
	Text	Data	BSS	Total	When running
xvi	99071	6748	3592	109447	1572 KB
elvis	274083	21272	14420	309775	1800 KB
nvi	339552	6336	6556	352444	1732 KB
vile	389660	5920	41004	436584	3116 KB
vim	1196120	67820	24408	1288348	6412 KB

Other documents

• Summary of Differences between Vi and Xvi
• Notes on the Xvi Source Code (available here as text or PDF)
• The UNIX manual page for xvi, which contains the "Summary of differences".

Source code

Third-party executables and old source code

Fame

• Eric S Raymond's "The Art of Unix Programming" in section 15
• comp.editors' "vi editor FAQ at section 1.5
• Baruch Promislow's "vi Editor FAQ" at section 1.5.
• Kent Nassen's Vi Information & Resources
• Thomer M. Gil's "Vi Lovers Home Page"

Sourceforge site and HTML documentation by martinwguy at users.sourceforge.net