"There are many versions of vi, and I'm going to be showing you how to use a version of vi called vim." Is there any other clone still under active development? Long years ago Vim won, hands down.
But nobody talks about GNU Emacs and vim. They say emacs and vi.
When I log into a server and I want an editor I type vi, not vim. Because vi has worked for twenty years, and I assume it always will work!
(That's actually why I bothered to learn a little bit about vi -- it is always there, on every Unix box, and it always works the same way -- no wacky transposition of Meta keys, etc. On my own machines I use nothing but emacs. ;)
Many Unix systems (generally the traditionalists) will include vi (as in the standard non-vim vi). Vim is then an added package that can be installed if you wish. There are also several other vi based/cloned like nvi which some Unix systems include. Vim I guess won in that its whats used for the day to day of text editing.
Vim did not win in that its a large package and users are often forced to use a lighter wieght vi clone to admin directly a on server machine.
there's still elvis, which is shipped by default on slackware.
And there's vile (http://invisible-island.net/vile/) too, a clone that handles buffers better (imo) than vim.
When I log into a server and I want an editor I type vi, not vim. Because vi has worked for twenty years, and I assume it always will work!
(That's actually why I bothered to learn a little bit about vi -- it is always there, on every Unix box, and it always works the same way -- no wacky transposition of Meta keys, etc. On my own machines I use nothing but emacs. ;)