Slashdot Mirror
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).
Boy, the way Taco is trying to start a holy war here, anyone would think that he made money on ad impressions every time someone posted a comment.
--
E_NOSIG
How come we can't mod CT's original post down as a troll?
Thank God I'm an atheist!
So did Vigor, the vi paperclip, make it into the 6.0 release?
here's the text of the latest 6.0ax announcement:
g e/ 23413
g e/ 23598
g e/ 23730
g e/ 23941
g e/ 24252
g e/ 24546
g e/ 24841
g e/ 25061 You can find the most recent patches here: ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/unreleased/patches What is Vim?
From: Bram Moolenaar
To: vim-announce@vim.org
Subject: Vim version 6.0ax BETA is available
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 15:51:23 +0200
Message-Id: Announcing: Vim (Vi IMproved) version 6.0ax BETA
Author: Bram Moolenaar et al. Announcement
------------ This is a BETA test version of Vim. Vim 6.0 is a huge step from Vim
5.x. Many, many new features and improvements have been included. For
an overview, with a few screendumps, look here: http://vim.sf.net/whyvim.php The past two weeks many bugs have been fixed. This release is to check
if no mistakes were made. If nothing important comes up, 6.0 will be
released in a few days. Thanks to all people who reported problems and
helped fixing them! If you notice a problem, please report it! It would be annoying if Vim
6.0 will be released with a problem that could have been fixed if you
would have reported it. If you are upgrading from Vim 5.x, please look out for problems you run into.
Vim 6.0 is mostly backwards compatible, but not 100%. Check out ":help
version6" for known incompatibilities. If you find a problem that can be
solved, please report it to me. Details about changes since the first beta can be found in these messages:
6.0aqhttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/vimdev/messa
6.0arhttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/vimdev/messa
6.0ashttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/vimdev/messa
6.0athttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/vimdev/messa
6.0auhttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/vimdev/messa
6.0avhttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/vimdev/messa
6.0awhttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/vimdev/messa
6.0axhttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/vimdev/messa
------------ Vim is an almost 100% compatible version of the UNIX editor Vi. Many new
features have been added: Multi level undo, syntax highlighting, command line
history, filename completion, block operations, etc. Those who don't know Vi
can probably skip this message, unless you are prepared to learn something new
and useful. Vim is especially recommended for editing programs. Vim runs on almost any Unix flavor, MS-DOS, MS-Windows 3.1, MS-Windows
95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP, OS/2, Atari MiNT, BeOS, VMS, RISC OS, Macintosh and
Amiga. For more information, see http://vim.sf.net. New since version 5.8
--------------------- The number of changes is huge. These are just the main new items: Folding - momentarily hide part of the text
Vertically split windows - mixed with horizontal splits
Diff mode - show and remove differences between files
Easy Vim: click-and-type - for those who really don't like two modes
User manual - learn to use Vim, reads like a book
Flexible indenting - automatic indenting for any language
Extended search patterns - more regexp power than you will need
UTF-8 support - Unicode allows editing nearly all languages
Multi-language support - translated messages and menus
Plugin support - drop a script in a directory and you can use it
Filetype plugins - an easy way to setup for editing a type of file
File browser - browse directories, also on a terminal
Editing files over a network - read and write a remote files directly
command-line editing window - use any Vim command to edit an Ex command
Debugging mode - debug your Vim functions and scripts
Cursor in virtual position - edit tables and draw ASCII pictures
Debugger interface - use Vim with Sun Visual Workshop
Communication between Vims - let one Vim tell another Vim what to do
Printing - print with syntax colors
Quickfix extended - see error messages in a window and jump there
Writing files improved - rename or copy to make a backup file
Argument list - select groups of files to work on
Restore a View - save the looks of a window and restore it later
Color schemes - quickly switch between different color setups See this page for the details: http://vim.sf.net/htmldoc/version6.html Where to get it
--------------- Information about which files to download for what system: http://vim.sf.net/download.php If you already know what to get, download it from here: ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/unreleased Or use one of the mirrors, see: ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/MIRRORS Mailing lists
------------- For user questions you can turn to the Vim mailing list. There are a lot of
tips, scripts and solutions. You can ask your Vim questions, but only if you
subscribe. See http://www.vim.org/mail.html. An archive is kept at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vim. If you want to help developing Vim or get the latest patches, subscribe to
the vim-dev mailing list. An archive is kept at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vimdev. Subject specific lists:
Multi-byte issues: vim-multibyte http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vim-multibyte
Macintosh issues: vim-mac http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vim-mac Reporting bugs
-------------- Send them to . Please describe the problem precisely. All the
time spent on answering mail is subtracted from the time that is spent on
improving Vim! Always give a reproducable example and try to find out which
settings or other things influence the appearance of the bug. Try starting
without your own vimrc file: "vim -u NONE -U NONE". Try different machines
if possible. See ":help bugs" in Vim. Send me a patch if you can! If something needs discussing with other developers, send a message to the
vim-dev mailing list. You need to subscribe first. Happy Vimming!
Why is it that many people who claim to support standards have such atrocious spelling and grammar?
...use cat and od
Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes
"Anyone who tells you differently is either wrong, lying, or criminally insane."
:)
You forgot "selling something."
... 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. :-|
as a novice linux user I ask what is the difference between Vi And EMACS. I don't want to hear your opinion, but feature wise what is the difference?
No flames please.
Photos.
All I can figure is that the Slashdot coders have made some sort of change and want to see if the crap filter can take a huge load or not. Batten down the hatches! It's destructive testing time! The only explination I can find for this topic at least.
Papa Legba come and open the gate
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.
I'm not a vi user, and this isn't intended to start a flame war, but it's nice to see vim sticking by it's one of it's principles - making a lightweight editor.
Bah - Emacs is already at version 20. Clearly this means Emacs is 333% better than vim!
Wait, you mean version numbers aren't a measure of quality? Dang!
I still stand by WordPerfect 5.1 (Change font = Ctrl+Alt+ScrLock+PageDown+Fe+F6+F12+~+X), or Edlin... The preferred Text Editor amongst Sado-Masochists.
From: patl@athena.mit.edu (Patrick J. LoPresti)
Subject: The True Path (long)
Date: 11 Jul 91 03:17:31 GMT
Newsgroups: alt.religion.emacs,alt.slack
When I log into my Xenix system with my 110 baud teletype, both vi *and* Emacs are just too damn slow. They print useless messages like, 'C-h for help' and '"foo" File is read only'. So I use the editor that doesn't waste my VALUABLE time.
Ed, man! !man ed
ED(1) UNIX Programmer's Manual ED(1)
NAME
ed - text editor
SYNOPSIS
ed [ - ] [ -x ] [ name ]
DESCRIPTION
Ed is the standard text editor.
---
Computer Scientists love ed, not just because it comes first alphabetically, but because it's the standard. Everyone else loves ed because it's ED!
"Ed is the standard text editor."
And ed doesn't waste space on my Timex Sinclair. Just look:
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 24 Oct 29 1929 /bin/ed /usr/ucb/vi /usr/bin/emacs
-rwxr-xr-t 4 root 1310720 Jan 1 1970
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 5.89824e37 Oct 22 1990
Of course, on the system *I* administrate, vi is symlinked to ed. Emacs has been replaced by a shell script which 1) Generates a syslog message at level LOG_EMERG; 2) reduces the user's disk quota by 100K; and 3) RUNS ED!!!!!!
"Ed is the standard text editor."
Let's look at a typical novice's session with the mighty ed:
golem$ ed
?
help
?
?
?
quit
?
exit
?
bye
?
hello?
?
eat flaming death
?
^C
?
^C
?
^D
?
---
Note the consistent user interface and error reportage. Ed is generous enough to flag errors, yet prudent enough not to overwhelm the novice with verbosity.
"Ed is the standard text editor."
Ed, the greatest WYGIWYG editor of all.
ED IS THE TRUE PATH TO NIRVANA! ED HAS BEEN THE CHOICE OF EDUCATED AND IGNORANT ALIKE FOR CENTURIES! ED WILL NOT CORRUPT YOUR PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS!! ED IS THE STANDARD TEXT EDITOR! ED MAKES THE SUN SHINE AND THE BIRDS SING AND THE GRASS GREEN!!
When I use an editor, I don't want eight extra KILOBYTES of worthless help screens and cursor positioning code! I just want an EDitor!! Not a "viitor". Not a "emacsitor". Those aren't even WORDS!!!! ED! ED! ED IS THE STANDARD!!!
TEXT EDITOR.
When IBM, in its ever-present omnipotence, needed to base their "edlin" on a UNIX standard, did they mimic vi? No. Emacs? Surely you jest. They chose the most karmic editor of all. The standard.
Ed is for those who can *remember* what they are working on. If you are an idiot, you should use Emacs. If you are an Emacs, you should not be vi. If you use ED, you are on THE PATH TO REDEMPTION. THE SO-CALLED "VISUAL" EDITORS HAVE BEEN PLACED HERE BY ED TO TEMPT THE FAITHLESS. DO NOT GIVE IN!!! THE MIGHTY ED HAS SPOKEN!!!
?
Carousel is a lie!
Text editors are for wimps!! I use a very small magnet to write my files. and CMOS when I'm feeling up to it..
- This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along, move along..
I recently installed a linux distro on a new hard drive. Imagine my surprise when I open up a config file in vi and (gasp) it was in color! The horror! I quickly turned off the monitor and haven't touched that computer since. Someday perhaps I will gather the courage to turn the monitor on again, but not anytime soon!
Color text files! [[[shudder]]]
Let me say that again.
Laugh, it's a funny comment.
Funny like this web site: vi man
The middle mind speaks!
I do believe it's called "humor", as in VIM vs EMACS is a geek injoke....
:(
Of course, the holy wars start because people have no sense of humor about this stuff.
No, it's like asking a Ferrari to emulate a 60-story office complex, an employment agency, an aircraft manufacturer, a luxury yacht, and a Ferrari.
Do you know what they call that emulation mode?
VILE (vi-like emacs)
For vi emulation of emacs, just type ":sh emacs" (without the quotes)
The middle mind speaks!
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.
:)
hawk
Here the main us mirror site as vim.org is in Germany http://ftp.us.vim.org/vim/
What if you're on some crusty old HP-UX machine in the back of someone's shop.
"Oops, sorry Mr. Client, I can't help you. This machine only has vi and, well, I'm just too lazy to learn how to use it. Maybe I can ftp the files to this Windows box and edit them with notepad... excuse me? Yes, certainly, I'll leave right away..."
> Has anyone done an emacs emulation mode for vim?
No, because they haven't figured out how to compress the 75 megs of diskspace a fuly featured emacs takes into the vim source, to give you that true "emacs feel".
Well, that's easy to say, but emacs has had ftp editing for at least 4 years (probably much longer). In my exeperience, it's been more powerful and more customizable than vi has been (and I learned vi first, yes).
Subjective issues aside, what does vi do that emacs doesn't? The only thing I've ever heard that I believe is that it loads faster.
My favorite new vim feature is :hardcopy. This feature lets you save to postscript (or print) versions of your file that look just like what's on the screen, including syntax
highlighting.
:P, but emacs has been able to do this for awhile, and its postscript printouts look *sweet*. Better than vim 6's.
.vimrc file, and now I can't even use anything else. I even use vim (with mutt) for email. It rocks.
.vimrc stuff to do this through google, but it didn't work (and I couldn't figure out why). Anybody know how to do this?
I hate to sound like every other poster on this board today
Before I get moderated down as off-topic, let me just say that vim 6 is badass... finally lets me use #RRGGBB values for syntax highlighting in the GUI. Whee. When the betas for 6 started appearing I spent a lot of time tweaking my
One thing I haven't been able to figure out how to do is to auto-read and -write GPG encrypted files (I know it can't do it in a perfectly secure way, the unencrypted version may get swapped out to disk, but I don't care so much about that. If somebody gets ahold of my hard drive, whatever. My secrets aren't all that interesting anyway.) I found some
Interesting tidbits
o/~ Join us now and share the software
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.
then Windows 2000 must be absolutely fantastic.
Therefore, no matter what you use on a regular basis, you should still learn how to use vi.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Truth be told, I started out as a vi bigot. EMACS was Eight Megs And Constantly Swapping, and I was constantly killing hung emacs processes left by my tcsh-using sidekick... (dammit, when the shell exits, it should bloody well SIGHUP the children... but that's another holy war...) And then there was the night I spent trying to upgrade my then-boss' personal AIX box. I ran out of DASD and it marked the kernel "broken" by mistake. A little RTFM on his partner's machine, fire up emacs, fix the LPP database the hard way, and the boss gets to work to find he's able to read an email timestamped 4-something-am instead of to find a busted machine. The rest has been a ten-year gradual slide into the world of auto-fill-mode, emerge, and find-file-other-window... yes, I still use vi for the occasional "quickie" editing task, and I don't disparage those who insist on only using it to the point of narfing a Win32 binary of vim or elvis... that's their choice, they're entitled to it, and I don't think it's wrong.
I would like to say, though, that given the fact that I've become an emacs user, and that some pseudo-Muslim fanatics have dared cause mass mayhem on American soil, and that some other pseudo-Christian fanatics have dared use xenophobia as an excuse for those attacks, I'm not surprised to see the Head Slashdotter trolling on his own front page. Whether or not his comment was in jest, it says a lot more about him than it does about me... and what it says is not very nice.
What a previous poster said: One war at a time, Taco.
We now return you to something vaguely resembling Stuff That Matters.
Oh, that's great. The vi/emacs flamewar is settled in my mind once and for all!
I mean, the cearly superior editor is the one which can be made to completely mimic the behavior of the other, lesser editor, right?
I once tried to find an emacs reference coffe-cup just like the one I had seen for vi. It was only available in sets of 20.
You're quite right. I don't know why you got modded down for this (Offtopic?); I suppose it's just another example of the old adage "Those that don't remember history are doomed to misuse mod points."
-- MarkusQ
As a former joe fan, I must suggest you check out Jed.
Unlike joe, it is being actively developed and supported, has readable source (while I like joe, have you ever looked at the source? The medication is helping, but I still twitch occasionally...), runs on Windows (yeah, sometimes I have to work on a Windows box and it's really nice to be able to have my editor of choice), and has both console and X/Win32 GUI versions.
Unlike emacs, it's relatively small & fast (though admittedly bigger & slower than joe); unlike vi, it's useful.
If you like joe, you should check out jed.
...of a fortune I saw (can be found in the "linux" file in the fortune package):
:x :wq dang it :w:w:w :x ^C^C^Z^D
vi is [[13~^[[15~^[[15~^[[19~^[[18~^ a
muk[^[[29~^[[34~^[[26~^[[32~^ch better editor than this emacs. I know
I^[[14~'ll get flamed for this but the truth has to be
said. ^[[D^[[D^[[D^[[D ^[[D^[^[[D^[[D^[[B^
exit ^X^C quit
-- Jesper Lauridsen from alt.religion.emacs
gunzip -c > executable
That way you don't have to do nearly as much typing.
Stability and easy of use are the main goals for the future.
Stability and what?!?
-Karl
Emacs President Shrub today announced a new iniative in the war on user-friendlyness; Operation Infinite Swapspace.
This can be seen as a direct response to vi's recent attacks on Emacs functionality when a flock of rabid vi supporters chanted "vi don't suck, vi is leet, vi can edit in ftp!" outside the Emacs embassy in Kaboom, capital of Afarawayistan.
An Emacs representative commented the attack with "Those evil vi-llains will do anything to confuse the issues. The fact is that Emacs can solve the Towers of Hanoi problem faster than a vi user can learn to save a file and this bugs the hell out of them since most of them don't even know where Hanoi is. We are going to find their leader /vigor/bin/laden and make him pay for this atrocity."
vigor himself just said that "Vi vill :q! them!"
The Piconian ambassador was not available for a // comment, but rumours has it that he's busy compiling evidence.
Money for nothing, pix for free
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.
It's late, I've just got back from work, and right at this moment, I don't care. So I'll respond. It's only more productive because you don't know how to use vi properly
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
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.
Emacs has been able to emulate VI pretty completely for ages actually, in addition to actually doing real work. Just takes a single snippet of e-lisp.
(use-global-map (make-sparse-keymap))
There you go! Just like vi, it beeps every time you do anything, and you can't quit. :)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
emacs won the war long ago against vi. vim is a different beast however. As someone said: emacs is a great operating system, but when I want to edit something I use vim. vim is still the best programmers editor. (Whish is what I use it for...) But personal preferences set aside. Some of the coolest things vim now has is vertical splitting, and code folding. It may or may not be true that emacs has had this for bilions and bilions!? of years, but that's not the issue... its just really useful stuff being added to the staple-code editor. My 0.02