OpenStars

So then it would affect literally all the pages in the book, if it were removed!?!:-P

Maybe to avoid all the page numbering after that being shifted?

Absolutely. Plus the keyboard shortcuts are just outstanding - e.g. shift-M takes you to the middle of the screen - and you can even programmatically do things like make changes to every other line within the range 100-1000 but nowhere else, and even then restrict the changes to only those matching a pattern.

And it is installed on most every machine in the world - even Windows is putting bash onto things these days (I forget if that is still optional, admittedly I haven’t touched Windows in nearly a decade:-P) - and has been since virtually the dawn of computing, certainly long before the modern age. :-D I’ve used ssh on a fucking blackberry and edited files with vim before smartphones existed!

It is, however, notably hard to learn to use, I grant that:-).

Okay but… obligatory “gVim offers the best of both worlds by offering use of a mouse if you want it”. There are also native ports for Mac OSX and Windows, etc.

Vim, in contrast, is a command-line program, suited for e.g. working with a text file on a remote server that may not even be running an X-windows interface, or maybe the user simply did not bother to connect to it:-).

Okay, we may now proceed with the humorous jesting:-).