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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. :-|
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/
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
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.
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).
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.
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.