vi – The Interface

Most of us know about the most popular clone of vi – vim. Here are some more editors that are either vi clones or support emulations:

• bvi – binary text editor
• Yi – text editor written in Haskell with both vim and emacs goodness
• Kate – The vi input mode
• jVi – a clone which is also a plugin for NetBeans
• nvi – a clone distributed with BSD
• viper – vi emulation on top of Emacs
• jsvi

However, vi has also inspired applications/plugins of completely different classes. Here are some examples:

• bash – a Unix shell has vi mode
• vimperator – an addon for Firefox, a Web browser, to make it behave like vim
• vimperopera – vimperator for Opera, another Web browser
• viemu – vi/vim emulator for Visual Studio, Word, Outlook and SQL Server
• vifm – ncurses based file manager with vi like key-bindings
• xzgv – image viewer
• mutt – text based email client
• apvlv – a PDF reader that behaves like vim
• xmonad – a tiling window manager with some vim-like key-bindings
• Google Reader – web based feed reader, and Gmail – a web based mail client, both borrow from vim key bindings

No wonder I thought of using the familiar interface while designing an application. All of us know vi the editor, but now it is the time of vi the interface. How many applications do we have like that?