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VIM 6.0 is Out
LinuxNews.pl writes "It's more then a year after releasing the first 6.0 alpha. Lot's of improvements (i.e. you can edit files via FTP!) - check
them out on vim.org" Of course everyone knows that vim is the best text editor in the world. Anyone who tells you differently is either wrong, lying, or criminally insane. (Or an emacs user, in which case they are wrong, lying and criminally insane).
... is at SourceForge. IMHO these pages are better organized and more helpful than the stuff on vim.org. Obviously not always up to date though, as the front page does not yet reflect the 6.0 release. :-|
in my day, we didnt have no fancy-shmancy editors, we used pico, and we liked it.
Don't Tread on Me
Nice anti-emacs rant, Taco. You also mentioned you're impressed that vim can now edit files via ftp. Well, let's take a look at the emacs changelog...
GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 17-Aug-1988
[snip]
Changes in version 18.52.
[snip]
** Visiting remote files.
On an internet host, you can now visit and save files on any other
internet host directly from Emacs with the commands M-x ftp-find-file
and M-x ftp-write-file. Specify an argument of the form HOST:FILENAME.
Since standard internet FTP is used, the other host may be any kind
of machine and is not required to have any special facilities.
So, emacs has been doing this for 13 years. You whining about how emacs users are crazy is like a Windows user in 1995 insulting Mac users, who had at the time been using the neat new Win95 features since 1984.
Here the main us mirror site as vim.org is in Germany http://ftp.us.vim.org/vim/
Actually, it does. At this point it is obvious your wrong, lying and criminally insane!
~~ What's stopping you?
^O works just fine in vim's input mode. Maybe your fat fingers mistyped it?
Someone wrote a program called vigor that does have a paperclip. Screenshots here. Hillarious sutff, especially for an emacs user *grin*
My other car is first.
Snagged from the front page of vim.org:
:-)
Vim-6 is out! rah rah rah!
And here is what Bram said in his announcement:
From: Bram Moolenaar
To: vim-dev@vim.org
Subject: Vim version 6.0 available!
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 19:22:57 +0200
Message-Id:
Well, there it is. More than a year after Vim 6.0a Alpha.
It's about time we get a full release!
There are a few bug fixes since 6.0ax, I don't expect them to
cause new trouble. The XIM problems have not really been solved,
but I didn't want to postpone the 6.0 release any further.
Hopefully the hack I included will make it work for most people.
I'll announce it to a larger audience
when the mirror sites have catched up.
Thanks to all the people who helped making Vim 6.0 what it is now.
Either by sending me patches and Vim scripts or just reporting tiny
problems. Vim wouldn't be the same without your contribution!!!
What next?
Next week I'm going to visit the project in Uganda. In November I have
another holiday planned. In between I'll try to fix the most important
bugs that are reported. Anything else will have to wait for a while.
Don't expect great new features in a next version. Vim has grown into a
complex program with so many features and options that there is nobody who
uses them all. Stability and easy of use are the main goals for the future.
vi - A VIsual editor. Older, smaller, and less full-featured. Newer vi-decendants, like vim, are larger and more feature-ruch. Mode-based editing - in insert more, typing "x" inserts an "x" into your buffer, while in command mode typing "x" deletes the character under the cursor. Commands are based on "ed", which is also the ancestor of sed. You can do some inserting stuff by feeding it ed commands, along the lines of ":%s/foo/bar/g" for global replacement. Pretty much tty based, some newer varients let you use the mouse directly.
emacs. Editor MACroS. "The extensible self-documenting text editor." "Escape Meta Alt Control Shift." Modeless editing (mostly, sort of). Has a LISP interpreter built in, which means its big (some might say bloated) and can do anything you want it to - there are entire applications written in Emacs Lisp. Editing involves a lot of "control" and "alt" key combinations - Control-X Control-C to exit, Control-X Control-F to open a new file, and so on. Works ok in a tty, or under X with point-n-click, dropdown menus, etc.
I like vi for small quick edits, and it's easier to run over a slow link. Emacs has a heck of a learning curve, but once you understand it, it'll be your best Unix friend. (Yes, there is a Windows version too.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Lot's of improvements (i.e. you can edit files via FTP!)
from the emacs documentation:
You can refer to files on other machines using a special file name syntax:
/host:filename
/user@host:filename
When you do this, Emacs uses the FTP program to read and write files on the specified host. It logs in through FTP using your user name or the name user. It may ask you for a password from time to time; this is used for logging in on host.
Normally, if you do not specify a user name in a remote file name, that means to use your own user name. But if you set the variable ange-ftp-default-user to a string, that string is used instead. (The Emacs package that implements FTP file access is called ange-ftp.)
You can entirely turn off the FTP file name feature by setting the variable file-name-handler-alist to nil.
Actually, my autistic nephew has better social skills than most /. posters...
Try ncftp. I've had it work through firewalls when regular ftp wouldn't. Something to do with passive/active ftp.
vi does not use "ed" as a backend, it uses "ex", which is similar to "ed".
Steve Oualline's book "Vi IMproved--Vim" is pretty good both as an introduction to vi, and to the vim-specific things as well. It's also released under the Open Publication License.
Yeah, but vim does synatax highlighting!
So it more like, look a red v, a blue i, and a green m.
Woo hoo!
And I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners.
Berke Breathed
I know it's a bit offtopic, but lowercase numbers actually do exist. Most professionally printed books will use them, because they look better in passages of text than uppercase numbers (the ones you normally use). You cna recognize lowercase numbers by the 1 that looks like a small I, and, and the 3, 4, 5, 7, and 9 that have descenders (go below the baseline like g's q's).
Sorry to nitpick but this is a rumor that is incorrect but repeated so often that everyone believes it:
The interface is quite different. Vim (like vi) has editing mode and command mode. Emacs just has editing mode. Both are command-driven though unless you use gvim or XEmacs - in that case you get an X11 user interface.
The reality is that both GNU/Emacs and XEmacs have both cli and gui interfaces. The "X" in XEmacs does not mean "X-Windows" but "X-tended". In fact, XEmacs (last time I looked) was the only one of the two that supported color syntax hilighting on a console, thus bettering GNU/Emacs in that department IMHO. This may have changed since then since I have not used a CLI in a very long time.
XEmacs differs from GNU/Emacs by adding things like a toolbar, multiple fonts per document, and the like. It also adds considerable overhead, and requires a faster computer and more RAM in order to match the speed of GNU/Emacs.
You might consider both GNU/Emacs and XEmacs to be "command driven" in that many operations are performed by typing e.g. M-x command, but in most cases you can also perform these operations using pull-down menu items, on both.
You are very correct in stating that both vi and the emacs-en are hard to learn, but having learned both I will state my opinion: emacs is slightly easier to learn since it is closer in operation to what most people consider a "normal" editor. Emacs is also much more powerful, especially for a trained user. Once you've learned emacs, you will find it very difficult to use any other "limited" editor.. and trust me, everything out there is "limited" when compared to emacs.
vi is, as others have said, "always there", so learning some basic vi skills will be useful. vi loads in under a second on all but the most pathetic hardware, but I would never subject myself to a programming a large-scale project using vi, though I have used it for smaller-scale programming work.
I guess this is like the whole linux-now-has-stateful-firealling thing...
Pedro Côrte-Real.
I apologize if this is redundant, but I didn't find any mention of it yet.
VIM has a charityware license. If you use VIM and like it, you can donate to the Kibaale Children's Centre, which helps orphans in Uganda. In VIM, type ":help iccf" to get more info, or go to ICCF's web site.
However, it is possible to run gvim under X-Windows, which if you get a recent version of XDarwin, means it will be running in the Aqua layer right alongside your Mac programs. Try searching for XDarwin or XonX at versiontracker.com. It's not necessarily easy to get XFree86 and XDarwin running, but it's not really all that hard, either
I've been using VIM 5.7 for quite a while under an older version of XDarwin. I haven't upgraded because it's stable and I like to use it in non-aqua mode so that I have multiple desktops.
Someone has probably already said this, but I'll say it here anyway: Start vim, and then type this:
:help tutorialAnd it will take you through all the steps of using it.
GPL made simple: What was my stuff is now our stuff. If you improve our stuff, please keep it our stuff.
Just thought I'd weigh into this holy war by mentioning WinVi. It's done by a German guy and is available in English, German, and Spanish. The design goals were to be identical to Notepad in a CUI sense, but still have vi functionality. It isn't a perfect vi implementation, but it has the majority of things you would need, and it's a great bridge to vi. If you've wanted to learn vi, but don't want to give up windows L&F, then it's a great choice. Oh and it loads as fast as notepad, and it's GPL'ed.
-no broken link
emm.. how about these?
VIM: http://www.iglu.org.il/faq/cache/101.html
Emacs: http://www.iglu.org.il/faq/cache/102.html
Pico: http://www.iglu.org.il/faq/cache/147.html
Other editors: http://www.iglu.org.il/faq/cache/145.html
Bill Gates Has No Penis.
Check out the latest user manual too. After the tutorial, it is the best thing that I've found that "completely" documents features in a reasonable and informative fashion. Type ":help user-manual" for the manual.