[diggan]

Yes, that is also a solution. However, you cannot use vim so if you're used to vim, it might feel limited without certain commands. You're also missing eventual plugins.

It's better than nothing though.

[ejstronge]

I don't think this is the case, though I may be misunderstanding what you wrote.

At the shell, it's true that you're limited to vi-style controls (so no text objects like ci").

However, once you press 'v' in normal mode you can drop into either vi or vim - this only depends on what $EDITOR is set to[1].

[1] http://blog.sanctum.geek.nz/vi-mode-in-bash/