Description of the issue (screenshots if relevant): When I open a new or empty file with vi the first line of the file shows the characters:
$q q
When I insert text into the file these characters disappear.
I never saw this behaviour in vi. Is this a bug and how can I fix it
Doesn’t happen here, but since you can apparently see the characters but not overwrite them, my guess is you’re somehow getting false control characters (newline or color change being shown as “$q q” or so).
What is $TERM set to? Are you using konsole? Or xterm? Or ssh-ing in from another machine running something else?
I have the same behaviour. With konsole, xterm, qterminal, also in dolphin (F4 pressed).
It seems a leak of refresh, because disappears splitting the screen (vert or oriz) or increasing (decreasing) the characters.
$ echo $TERM
xterm-256color
It is printable also as .pdf or save output as .txt
but not overwritable.
Good work. It does seem perhaps some kind of leak. If I open say:
$ vi test.txt
and see the spurious characters then write that file with :wq then reopen with kwrite I have an empty file with no spurious characters. Whatever that means.
Maybe some obscure configuration?
Try
cd ~
rm -rf .vim .viminfo
(If you have any intentional configuration in there, make backups of those files first)