The Union of Vim with KDE

Philippe Fremy writes "Thomas Capricelli, Mickael Marchand and me are pleased to present the first ever stable version of KVim, finally bringing "the power of VIM with KDE's friendliness". This release contains a port of the standalone editor Vim 6.0 to Qt/KDE (2 and 3) and a KDE KPart Component. The component can currently embed either of GVim or KVim in Konqueror (screenshots), with out-of-process embedding. Further work is required before proper support for KDevelop, KMail and Kate is available, but things are moving forward." As everyone knows, Vim is the best (only?) text editor, and KDE is the best (only?) desktop system. Heh.

Comments

Woohoo!

[larien]

Never again will I end up getting errors when I hit escape while editting an email message...:)

On a serious note, it shows that we can do things under linux that happen in Windows; the OLE model in Windows has allowed things like this for years, and it's about time we had a similar model in the *nix world.

Re:Woohoo!

[Beliskner]

it shows that we can do things under linux that happen in Windows; the OLE model in Windows has allowed things like this for years, and it's about time we had a similar model in the *nix world

Grrrrrreat so now *nix people can experience the wonders of file corruption and badly configured OLE servers locking out data just like our Windoze buddies. I think Sun can request Microsoft for a donation for destabilising *nix to make way for Microsoft Datacenter

Re:Woohoo!

[Beliskner]

Yup, loads of problems with OLE. Don't use Word documents with Norton installed.

Re:Woohoo!

[larien]

Note I said "similar" :) Hopefully, we get all the good parts (embedded components) without the bad parts (lockups, corruption etc).

OLE (or a similar technology) in itself is a great idea in theory, but if it's badly implemented then you can get problems. Hopefully, the KDE implementation is good enough to avoid these pitfalls.

Re:Woohoo!

[Ace Rimmer]

Precisely - I'm still waiting for a real embbedded (both qt and gtk) vim component - My evolution, kmail and a bunch of others desire for it ;).

Re:Woohoo!

[Cally]

Lockups? corruption? (looks puzzled) You must have set your machine up wrongly.

Re:Woohoo!

[j09824]

On a serious note, it shows that we can do things under linux that happen in Windows; the OLE model in Windows has allowed things like this for years, and it's about time we had a similar model in the *nix world.

I find it absolutely fascinating that people think that the UNIX world lacks features found in Windows because, well, because of what? Do you seriously believe that people didn't have the resources to create this for UNIX?

The fact is that OLE (and its successors) are unreliable kludges. They grew out of some hacks trying to make Office components talk to one another, for which they were sort-of OK. But when applied to arbitrary applications, the GUI merging and process model they give you result in lousy user interfaces and unreliable applications. UNIX didn't get them because UNIX users didn't see a pressing need for them; other mechanisms work better.

Even if you think that what OLE was trying to do is actually useful, OLE and its successors are about the worst way of implementing it: unportable, low-level hacks that are difficult to version and don't protect programs from one another. OLE is really mainly an attempt to give C++ programs at least a little bit of what systems like Smalltalk and Java give you for free. And, surprise, Microsoft finally caught on and replaced the whole OLE/COM/ActiveX mess with C#/CLR (of course, there is some backwards compatibility and they use the OLE/COM terminology to explain the new functionality in C#/CLR).

Re:Woohoo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but it needs to be good, not like the KParts
Gnome developers have put together Bobobo for this,
I really like it..

Re:Woohoo!

[theCoder]

Generally, I agree... but try using Equation Editor in Word. Lots of times. Usually, it's pretty stable, but it has crashed Word on me before (with the associated loss of data). The COM framework itself is pretty stable, but the components may not be.

Maybe I should just learn LaTeX...

Re:Woohoo!

[blakestah]

Precisely - I'm still waiting for a real embbedded (both qt and gtk) vim component - My evolution, kmail and a bunch of others desire for it ;).

I don't get it. I use mutt to read mail, and it is quite happy to embed vim for my usage in a console window.

I think the fancy trick used is called a pipe, but I am not sure. But it seems any editor that can run in a console can use the same trick, so maybe OLEs for linux are pretty advanced already ?

Re:Woohoo!

[StillaCoward]

Just wanted to let you know, that is the most awsome sig I've seen in a while. :)

Re:Woohoo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hm...... If nobody wants OLE/COM/ActiveX ability on X, it is similar to say that we do not need KDE or Gnome.

Re:Woohoo!

[kubrick]

Even if you think that what OLE was trying to do is actually useful, OLE and its successors are about the worst way of implementing it: unportable, low-level hacks that are difficult to version and don't protect programs from one another.

Sounds a bit like the WWW when compared to Ted Nelson's Xanadu. And look which one ended up winning. :/

It's often the quick hacks that sneak in (or are forced upon people :); there was a recent Slashdot story about yEnc, which people perceived to be a similar (bad) solution to 8-bit binary encoding for Usenet.

Re:Woohoo!

[Anonymous Coward]

That is 100% correct. Let's face it: KDE and Gnome are playing catch-up. They both will be obsolete when somebody invents a truly immersive system. A system that is more like Java or C#, but much better. More like the best combination of Self, Smalltalk, Ruby and Haskell. Now that would be cool. And with an inventive GUI that is easy to integrate with the CLI to top it. Additionally, it's got to be faster than smalltalk. Squeak may be nice for simple and small projects, but it's a dog under stress. Therefore you need native compilation and optimizations. You need to be able to compile to static native code. Reflectivity and mutability comes at a price too high for core parts of the system, but should be present at an even higher price - recompilation. Everything should be optional though. You should even be able to run any parts under an interpreter if you fancy that, like in Ruby.

Of course, to pull this off you need years and years of research-time. Which is why it's not so easy and will probably not be available in the next 15 years. Unless someone are already on their way.. The real trick is integrating/translating already developed works separately. I don't think this is feasible in a meaningful way the next 100 years, but the Tunes-people seem to believe so. However, dreamers don't produce any code.

Me? I have a long lifeline, but not as long as all my ideas. Besides, you need to understand CS in such gory details it starts messing up your worldviews. I'll devote my time on people instead.

Re:Woohoo!

[Anonymous Coward]

While glancing through Self magazine, I made Smalltalk with my friend Haskell about my new Ruby ring. I asked her if I should make my husband a cup of Java, but she said, "Not until he buys you a Perl necklace." I smiled and said "C you later" then hung up the phone.

Re:Woohoo!

[Beliskner]

Lockups? corruption? (looks puzzled) You must have set your machine up wrongly.

Try to put a 100 megabyte zipfile into say a Microsoft Access DB. This goes via object packager which adds the OLE headers. Object packager is unable to handle anything larger than 15 Megs (I've found on a trial-and-error basis). Running on Win 98, NO UPDATES available from Microsoft, I've searched their website and KB thoroughly.

Inserting OLE objects manually via an external program using C++ and MFC might bypass this problem.

Re:Woohoo!

[Beliskner]

***but try using Equation Editor in Word. Lots of times***
True, I've been shafted by OLE loads of times. Microsoft is certainly one of the great forces for convincing the masses about making backups. Maybe Micro$oft has a deal with tape drive manufacturers, etc.

It's so bad that the latest software I've produced automatically applies a hotfix without prompting the user, fix their God damn machines for them, here's the code

Private Sub Form_Open(Cancel As Integer)
On Error GoTo Err_Fuck_Form_Open
'If NAV exists, disable it
Dim sValue As String
If Not fReadValue("HKCR", "CLSID\{00020906-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}\InPr ocServer32", "", "S", "", sValue) Then
If Right$(sValue, 12) = "SCRBLOCK.DLL" Then 'Norton Antivirus scriptblocker is installed... kill it
SaveProperty "Norton", "Detected"
SaveProperty "NortonKey", sValue
If fDeleteKey("HKCR", "CLSID\{00020906-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}", "InProcServer32") Then
MsgBox "Norton Antivirus has been detected which may interfere with Microsoft Word documents contained in/connected to this database in line with Symantec advisory document. This database has been unsuccesful at passifying the application [I require Administrator privileges to do this automatically]" + vbNewLine + "As an alternative, please disable script-blocking from your Norton Antivirus console to enable these functions, Symantec corporation states that other aspects of the virus-scanner may function normally", vbInformation
SaveProperty "LastFailureofNortonDisablerOn", Now
End If
End If
End If

Init:
On Error GoTo Err_Form_Open
If GetProperty("AllowLinkedDocs") = "True" Then TheObject.OLETypeAllowed = acOLEEither
Dim dbs1, dbs2 As Database, Rec1, Rec2 As Recordset, fileCnt, MAX_REPO As Integer, fs As New FileSystemObject
MAX_REPO = Val(IIf(GetProperty("RepoSize") = "", "100", GetProperty("RepoSize")))
If fs.FileExists(CurrentProject.Path + "\~tmpdb.mdb") Then MsgBox "The scratch repository exists, indicating a prior crash, possibly due to disk space problems. This will be converted back to a repository", vbInformation: Call Bollox_tmpExists 'Shit, must have crashed on last run - clear up
Set dbs1 = CurrentDb
Set Rec1 = dbs1.OpenRecordset("~OLEs")
If Not Rec1.EOF Then 'There is data in the ~OLE table - problem, last run must have crashed before it could be saved to the repository, or maybe after it was saved to the repository...
If MsgBox("There is a problem - documents are stored in the temporary tables indicating a possible crash last time." + vbNewLine + "Should I attempt to re-save the documents?", vbYesNo, "Try save again?") = vbYes Then
DoCmd.Close acForm, Me.Name
Exit Sub
Else 'They better be DAMN SURE!
If MsgBox("Are you really really sure you want to delete these documents in limbo?", vbYesNo, "Sure you're sure?") = vbYes Then
DoCmd.SetWarnings False
DoCmd.RunSQL "DELETE FROM [~OLEs] WHERE 1=1", False 'Clear the temp table
DoCmd.SetWarnings True
Else 'Discard the temp documents...
DoCmd.Close acForm, Me.Name
Exit Sub
End If
End If
End If

DoCmd.OpenForm "InlineOLEProgress"

On Error GoTo Err_Db_DidNotOpen
For fileCnt = 1 To MAX_REPO
If (fileCnt Mod 10) = 0 Then
Form_InlineOLEProgress.ProgressText = "Loading from repository " + Format(fileCnt, "0000") + vbNewLine + "Found " + Str(Rec1.RecordCount) + " documents for this client"
Form_InlineOLEProgress.ProgBar.Value = fileCnt / MAX_REPO * 9999
Form_InlineOLEProgress.Repaint
End If
If Not fs.FileExists(CurrentProject.Path + "\repo" + Format(fileCnt, "0000") + ".mdb") Then GoTo Db_FileNotExist
Set dbs2 = OpenDatabase(CurrentProject.Path + "\repo" + Format(fileCnt, "0000") + ".mdb")
Set Rec2 = dbs2.OpenRecordset("SELECT * FROM OLEs WHERE PatientID=" + Format(Val(OpenArgs), "#"), dbOpenForwardOnly) 'Bring all of this patient's OLE stuff into thisdb from all repositories
While Not Rec2.EOF
Rec1.AddNew
With Rec2
Rec1.Fields("PatientID") = .Fields("PatientID")
Rec1.Fields("Comments") = .Fields("Comments")
Rec1.Fields("TheObject") = .Fields("TheObject")
End With
Rec1.Update
Rec2.MoveNext
Wend

Db_FileNotExist:
Next fileCnt

On Error GoTo Err_WeirdPlaceforanError
Rec1.Close
dbs1.Close
DoCmd.Close acForm, "InlineOLEProgress"
Me.Requery
Me.Caption = "Documents of Patient " + OpenArgs

Exit_Form_Open:
Exit Sub

Err_Db_DidNotOpen: 'ERROR handling in the FOR loop
Resume Db_FileNotExist

Err_Form_Open: 'ERROR handling on setting up the FOR loop
MsgBox "The Documents form has failed to initialise. Details:" + vbNewLine + Err.Description: Cancel = True
Resume Exit_Form_Open

Err_Fuck_Form_Open: 'ERROR in Norton Antivirus hotfixer
MsgBox "An unexpected error has occured whilst augmenting NAV. Details:" + vbNewLine + Err.Description
Resume Init

Err_WeirdPlaceforanError:
MsgBox "A minor runtime error in Documents -> Form_Open has occured whilst processing this directive. Details:" + vbNewLine + vbNewLine + Err.Description + vbNewLine + vbNewLine + "It may be possible to continue normally", , "Unanticipated error"
Resume Next
End Sub

Re:Woohoo!

[Anonymous Coward]

What's your point ?

You cannot do this at all on Unix for you don't even have apps like Access.
Gee, still proud of keeping your databases in delimited text files ?

Re:Woohoo!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the fancy trick used is called a pipe, but I am not sure.

Yeah, you're wrong, actually. The fancy trick is called a "temp file".

Re:Woohoo!

[Thomas Charron]

It is obviouse from this post that you know NOTHING about OLE, COM, ActiveX, etc. PLEASE get a clue to backup your opinions, becouse this is pure and utter drivel.

Lousy user interfaces are the fault of the engineer, not of the component technology used to allow embedding..

And as far as COM being used to give C++ capability, your ignorance shines thru. COM uses 'C' functions. COM is not even away of what the heck a C++ object is. Thats why MFC, ATL, etc, have to wrap it for the less technical folks..

Get your facts strait..

Re:Woohoo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the terminal takes up the whole screen, things like mutt just launch vim on a temp file, and read the temp file later.

With a windowing environment it's different. You have widgets that take a small part of a window. To embed vim in that, it takes more than launching gvim on a temp file, which would of course open a new window.

Even if it did use a pipe, which it doesn't, pipes don't really apply to GUI widgets. In theory, you could make every text widget pipe a copy of vim, and effectively make every text widget a terminal emulator. But that would be wasteful. It'd waste memory; it'd waste cycles; it'd waste pseudo-terminal devices.

Re:Woohoo!

[Cally]

win98 isn't even supported any more.

BTW, just wanted to make the point I'm a Free software supported, this comment posted via Mozilla on Linux. But it annoys me to see supposed free/open advocates knocking the quality of Microsoft code; there are some duff marketing driven design decisions in there (Outlook... need I say more?) , and win9x was a complete crock, but PLEASE - do yourselves a favour - DON'T underestimate the quality of the oppostion, or MS users who dabble with Linux for a bit will say "Hey! Gnome crashed, I thought Unix wasn't supposed to ever do that! Huh, all the Linux hype must be BS" and go back to Redmond-land.

Re:Woohoo!

[Beliskner]

True. Linux people just plain don't care about what you're saying. If you install an application and complain about usability they'll say "go get a PhD in Perl+shell scripting then fix it yourself".

It's a selfish attitude, "Me and every other Perl hacker can use it, screw dumbasses that don't know Perl"

Nice, serious, but no thanks

[MadFarmAnimalz]

Defies the whole persona of vim. vim loses what makes it useful when you stick it in a window and add menus and buttons.

vim is all about those wierd keystrokes you learn that funnily enough grow on you and multiply your productivity.

While I'm sure you can still do this with kvim, I don't see what would get a real vim user to use kvim rather than just vim in konsole.

Nice idea, like I said, but I don't expect too much takeup.

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[smaughster]

You are right that one of the powerfull features of vim is that everything can be done from the console, which multiplies your productivity. Having added window menus and buttons however decreases the initial learning curve. So starting vim users will find it quite easy to do simple things in Kvim, but they will use the console mode more and more once they become experienced users until they become "real vim users".

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[Captain Pedantic]

Do you use vim now? How come it didn't lose what made it useful when the gtk build stuck it in a window and added menus and buttons god knows how long ago?

Or is it that no real vim users have used it since version 4?

Come to think of it, I bet vi is a symlink to pico on your system.

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[uhmmmm]

It's probably great for those of us who get so used to :wq that we always hit escape in our email clients and other places it causes problems.

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[Rentar]

vim is all about those wierd keystrokes you learn that funnily enough grow on you and multiply your productivity.

Of course, but the real beauty of KVim is the KPart. You can use the kvim kpart to edit any textfile in konqueror without opening another terminal and/or window. This is great for hybrid users who love the CLI/Shell but use konqueror or any other file manager every now and then. I usually use graphical file managers primarily for browsing (the local filesystem, not the web) and not for doing real work (like moving files around and editing text files). The KVim kpart might change this a bit.

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[WowTIP]

I am not so sure about that. Yes, power users will always find the console mode commands, but most users that start using KVim probably will continue using the menu commands until... well, forever. I know several people that has been using windows, word and other ms products for years, who still go into the menues for cut, copy and paste.

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[Stuart Park]

I have always been a serious vim fan, and have used unix and linux for many years.. however, the menus/mouse/buttons/etc in "gvim" (and I assume "kvim" will be similar) makes many functions significantly easier. Cut-and-paste is quick with a mouse, changing the size of windows is fast, and the scrollbar is very useful.
If I want to quickly write a small file, plain vim is best - but for lengthy editing sessions, gvim/kvim is the best!

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[Rhone]

vim is all about those wierd keystrokes you learn that funnily enough grow on you and multiply your productivity.

Well yeah, that's the point. With the kvim kpart (when it's more developed and working with more than just konqueror), people will be able to use their weird little keystrokes in just about any KDE program that uses an editor.

In particular, I bet there are many programmers out there who don't want to edit in anything other than vim but would like to use kdevelop.

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[flossie]

Menus are a good way to learn what features a package has when you are learning to use it. It is generally a lot quicker to browse the menu and see what happens than to read through pages and pages of documentation - especially when you haven't yet decided if the tool is the right one for you.

The menubar on emacs (for instance) is a great way of introducing emacs to complete novices. The smart ones usually find (or redefine) the hotkeys quickly enough.

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[popeyethesailor]

If you are using menus/mouse/buttons to do normal editing operations(cut&paste,scrolling etc), you dont need Vim.
OTOH,if you are indeed keen on using Vim, there are plenty of tricks in it that can make you keep the mouse permanently away.

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[Psiren]

Indeed. When I started using Emacs about 7 years ago, I found the keystrokes bizzare. C-x C-c to quit? Eh? Whats wrong with C-q? ;)

Now, its just second nature, so much so that I'm always typing it in other editors and getting annoyed when it doesn't work. I found a lot of interesting features poking through the menus. Another nice thing is if you do M-x something, and its bound to a key, Emacs will tell you. If you do it often enough you'll get to remember that keystroke and start using it more and more. My favourite is completion (M-/). I expect that accounts for up to half my keystrokes ;)

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[skt]

yeah you're right. An editor like VIM inside of an application with menus like mutt isn't usefull at all and lowers productivity.

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[reynaert]

Defies the whole persona of vim. vim loses what makes it useful when you stick it in a window and add menus and buttons.

You'd better reread Vim's design goals. From the documentation:

Vim is not a shell or an Operating System. You will not be able to run a shell inside Vim or use it to control a debugger. This should work the other way around: Use Vim as a component from a shell or in an IDE. A satirical way to say this: "Unlike Emacs, Vim does not attempt to include everything but the kitchen sink, but some people say that you can clean one with it. ;-)"

Vim is designed to be embedded in other applications. An example of this is the integration with Sun Visual Workshop, support for which is included in the official version.

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[SkyLeach]

Those types of people abhore using anything without menus in the first place, so it's still a good choice to add menus to Vim. The thing is, gVim already does that.

I started using Vim some time ago, and it's the very first thing I install on any machine if I'll be doing much work on it and if it's not already there. .gvimrc and .vimrc are part of my port-a-persona that I carry from machine to machine. If it weren't for the menus on the windows port of gvim I probably wouldn't have been able to learn the commands quickly enough not to loose interest.

$0.02

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[Chemicalscum]

My vi is symlinked to vigor - That will stymie any vi user getting on my machine.

I'll still worship at the Church of Emacs on Gnome.

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[Lord of the Files]

I've been using vim (the console version) for years, and I'm interested in this because it's a kpart. I don't care about the menus, I'll just ignore them. But being able to embed a vim window in konqueror when I click on a file, rather than opening a seperate konsole with vim, or using kde's native editor, would be great. I've been hoping for a way to do this for several months.

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[archen]

Menus will not be neccesary for helping people learn Vim once Vigor is fully integrated. Then we can all beg for redemption, and swear we'll never again mess with the text console goodness that is Vi.

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[xonker]

I don't see what would get a real vim user to use kvim rather than just vim in konsole.

I probably wouldn't use kvim instead of vim for writing or whatnot - but they mention embedding it in other KDE apps, which might be very attractive if you happen to like using KMail or another KDE application. I've been using vim so long that the keystrokes are now force of habit - using any other editor is painful.

I wonder how many people already use GVim instead of Vim? It's not for me, but I'm still glad that they're available for the folks who are new to *nix and who aren't comfortable starting out with Vim without pretty icons and menus.

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[Florian Weimer]

Defies the whole persona of vim. vim loses what makes it useful when
you stick it in a window and add menus and buttons.

I'm not so sure. I think it would be great if you could add the contents
of feedback forms using vi in your favorite web browser (it's already
possible if you use w3m, for example, or W3 using viper, but some people
prefer graphical browsers at a decent speed).

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

right you are, and I'm one of them!

I have to say, there was a touch in the original post of either "People who use vi(m) are only doing so to prove how studly they are, thus they wouldn't want a gui" in the original post, which rubbed me the wrong way. I love Vim, I'm spoiled, any other editor (even the venerable emacs) doesn't do it for me (even other clones of vi). However, I do use a giu, I prefer to use use a gui, and I don't find vim incompatible w/ the idea of a gui at all. I use Gvim in Linux and in Windows. I am unhappy editing with anything lesser. I'm not just trying to impress people w/ my computer studlyness.

I.O.W., give it a rest and stop worrying about why people like the things they do.

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, for normal editing (excepting cut and paste improvements) i'd
have to agree. But for one thing. KMail, this is unusable to me without a proper editor, but is nevertheless a quite nice email client that i'd kind of like to use (mainly to read non-ascii mails)

Alex

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

I use gvim for nearly everything (it's even set up as the editor in MSDEV at work -- OLE's not all bad :)

That said, I have 'guioptions -=T' in my vimrc, so I don't get the toolbar.

Nice things about the GUI
- I like having lotsa windows, and not losing my console when I open an editor is nice
- mouse cut/paste still seems faster for pasting between different apps
- gvimdiff
- the option to integrate with other GUI apps (see above MSDEV reference)
- gvimdiff
- toolbars/mousewheel, also nice when moving between apps (I still use the keyboard when only in vim)

I only really use vim in an xterm when I'm SSH-ed over a slow connection...

OT KDE question: has anyine else had trouble with KDE on laptops? I've had lotsa trouble with KDE not coming back right after a suspend (slack 7.1/8.0 w 2.4.17 on Dell inspiron 3800) where gnome is fine...

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[Billly Gates]

One word. Fonts! Font support is getting alot better in X and Kde. I can also read code easier from a white background rather then a black. I believe an editor like you said should just edit text. However in today's world you need a documentation viewer, debugger, code designer if your on a project at work, and other utilities to develop code. Visual studio has had these things for years and kdevelop has all of these except a good built in editor.

The unix way has always been to use one program for one task and connect another program for another. I believe kdevelop which manages your projects and links konqueror for the doc browser, kdebugger for the debugger, and kvim which will replace kwrite for the editor is the best way to go. Ole has had this for years. I also assume that the menu bars will be removed when launched within Kdevelop like kwrite is so there is no worry about lost monitor space. I use vim within Visual C++ on my windows2k workstation at home. Its great to use the commands and still have the full functionality of a whole ide. This is probably why kvim was written and not for just cute little menu bars and icons. If you don't like it you can always use the old vim from a terminal.

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[Paladin128]

Actually, the real benefit is using KVim embedded in other KDE applications. If you REALLY like VI's input method, and want to use it in your mailer, IDE, etc., that's where KVim comes in.

Now if only there was a KEmacs :)

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Vim has been used as a Bonobo (Gnome) component for ages. But hey, Slashdot front page when a minor bit of functionality is added to that bloated, slow, and poorly designed license-nightmare known as KDE.

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[tijnbraun]

Talking about email en vi command....
You really should read this comment in a newsgroup...
The use of vi commands in email might be more connected than you think.

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[sketerpot]

I still sometimes use C-x C-s to save in miscellaneous editors, and it works okay if I don't have anything selected. But mostly I just keep on using emacs so I can get stuff done. I was trying to make a pinglike program for Windows, but the Visual Studio GUI was either not flexible enough or too complicated for me to get the project to compile. I started using the command line, and then I just went to emacs, and I haven't regretted it since.

But on topic, I do think that this KVim thing will be yet another good editor, and it will be particularly nice to embed it in other programs.

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

I use gvim and to tell you the truth, the convenience I get from arbitrary colours with syntax highlights and tear-off menus with a list of functions in a file etc. are just too cozy to give away.

If you want to be anal, then be anal. But Vim keystrokes are not weird... You can use all Vim keystrokes with the gvim (which by the way is Vim with gtk menus and windowing kabazz).

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[Enahs]

I'd like to add that GVim did it first, and people didn't really complain too much about it. I guess it's okay if the front end is GTK+. ;-D

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[AFaus]

Well, here is a good reason for kvim: network transparency (i.e. ioslaves)

I spend most of my time editing remote files: with vim, I have to download them using FTP, edit them, and upload them.

With kwrite (kde's simple editor), i can just open them remotely, edit and save them, and they will be downloaded and uploaded automagically.

This is a significant speed bonus (if you do this all day), so i use kwrite, even if I like much more vim.

Yes, i could mount a NFS, but the remote system is windoze, and FTP is the only thing I can hope.

So I have been waiting for a long time for kvim, and now I am __very__ happy that it's here.

And of course, using the vim editor in kdevelop is going to make it a much more useful toy.

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[vroomfondel]

I use gvim instead of vim when it's available for two reasons. One, when syntax highlighting is useful, more and more visually appealing color schemes are possible than I've been able to make work in a terminal window. Two, it solves the pesky backspace problem you sometimes encounter on linux systems without any hassle. If neither of those apply, I don't generally bother. I never use the toolbars or menu anyway.

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[nvrrobx]

I have to argue with you here.. At work, I'm stuck in Windows land, but I extensively use gvim. I know all of the commands I need and such, but it's nice to fall back on a menu if I get lazy / forget things.

Plus, the concept of hitting Esc :wq to save/send an email excites me. :)

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[edyu]

Well said. I urge every vim user to try vim + konsole. Or even, vim + konsole + ion. This way your hands never have to stray from the normal resting position. BTW, to really use vim, you need a sun layout keyboard. The ESC and CTRL keys have to be at the right place.

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[jtra]

Vim is designed to be embedded in other applications.

... while Emacs is designed to embed applications in itself. ;-)

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Diito - I keep the menus since they're a convenient way of doing a few things, e.g listing open buffers, but I turned the toolbar off as soon as I worked out how.

Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[civilizedINTENSITY]

You miss the concept. Its not to replace vim. Its to insert vim into all those little places where text entry occurs. Wouldn't it be cool if my browser gave me vim functionality in this little Comment Box?

Re:Flamewar attempt

[x0n]

If this is a "blatant attempt" to start a flamewar, then you my friend, are guilty of putting the first match to the kindling.

You could have just ignored it ;)

Re:Flamewar attempt

[glwtta]

I kinda thought it was a tongue in cheek joke... no need to get your shorts in a bunch.

Re:Flamewar attempt

[nitehorse]

Take a closer look. CmdrTaco himself added that comment, not the submitter of the article.

And yes, we would dance around a camp fire if GNOME announced that it shut down. Or... well, at least some of us would. And we know that at least a few of them would do the same if we ever gave up. :)

april 1st

[phrostie]

this would have been a great april fools joke. Kvim could include an add on module called kflame that automaticaly generates flaming posts. this would force Gvim to release Gflame. these would be followed by Kextinguish and Gwiz. oh please let it end!

Re:april 1st

[amorsen]

M-x flame

Re:april 1st

[awol]

this would have been a great april fools joke. Kvim could include an add on module called kflame that automaticaly generates flaming posts. this would force Gvim to release Gflame. these would be followed by Kextinguish and Gwiz. oh please let it end!

Sounds like Blazeware(TM) to me.

Re:april 1st

[flossie]

M-x smile

Re:Flamewar attempt

[Uller-RM]

Since it's not in italic, chances are that this was CT's comment, and not the original article writers.

And while they wouldn't dance around a camp fire, the hate isn't exactly pretended either. KDE/Gnome has become one of the holy wars of computing: vi/emacs (go nano!!!), littleendian/bigendian, OOP, and many other venerable silly battles. It's actually an ideological battle - GNOME was started in the first place because KDE was based on Qt, which isn't GPL. Thus, the rush to create a GPL'd window/widget toolkit (GTK) and environment.

Justice?

[carm$y$]

Maybe Bill Gates, with his vi background, will consider using KDE in windows 2004... :)

Re:Justice?

[Slynkie]

Almost as cool, Vim can already be used as an editor for those of us who are forced to use MS Visual Studio in our daily lives:

http://www.vim.org/doc/if_ole.txt

Components are coming

[Shillo]

Well, it's been a high time to get real components on UNIX. Considering that UNIX (and Linux) are all about small tools doing their jobs and integrating with each other, components are logical extension of pipes... Now I just wish I had the time to start a project - I'd probably write component browser/method invoker module for zsh. :)

Anyway... kudos to VIM folks for getting this right.

--

Motivation for this port?

[AstroMage]

I understand that the component part of this project adds a lot, and agree with previous posts (like the first post) that this is an important advance.

However, I fail to see the motivation for KVim as a standalone app. What would I, a user, benefit from using this, as opposed to, say, using gvim? Does gvim not run well under DKE?

This humble user greatfully awaits your awesome input... :-)

Re:Motivation for this port?

[Anonymous Coward]

in a KDE environment, a QT/KDE app looks better as it provides a "native" feel.

i use GNOME as my main desktop environment, and personally i prefer GTK/GNOME apps over QT/KDE apps even if the KDE one might be a bit technically superior.

So i guess the KDE users feel the same.

Re:Motivation for this port?

[zoward]

USers who use KDE exclusively as their desktop may not even have installed all the GNOME libraries needed to run gvim, so now they'll be able to run a GUI version of vim. It seems like these days desktop linux users have both KDE and GNOME installed from the get-go, though.

Re:Motivation for this port?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see many benefit for KVim over GVim, except that it is fun to have! There are also some serious reasons:

When we started KVim, GVim (the gtk one) was completely unmaintained.

And to make the initial KPart component, we needed full control over the vim, so we needed it in our native toolkit.

Now, it works in an out-of-process fashion, so you can indeed use gvim or kvim. But it renders ugly when you have one control inside an application that has completely different scrollbar than the rest or the application.

Integartion man, that's it.

Re:Motivation for this port?

[Anonymous Coward]

because gtk+ sux0rs j00r a55 h0m0-G

Re:Motivation for this port?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah.. I think the kde printing support is reason enough. For people like me who print from vim a lot, this is a godsend to have (kdeprint rocks!). I currently type with gvim and print with kwrite/kate, but it looks like kvim could let me eliminate this step.

Now to go home and download the thing before it's slashdotted.

Re:Motivation for this port?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gvim isn't Gnome based, though it can use some of the gnome libs if present. All it requires is Gtk+, which most people should have.

(Technically, it doesn't even need that - there's a list of several toolkits it compiles against, such as Athena, and I think Motif).

Erm...

[Otis_INF]

What's the big deal? VI rocked back in the days when 80x24 amber/green monitors / terminals were the thing to use, but today editors which are SMART are way more productive, since they let the developer focus on the job that has to be done, instead of looking up information that should be available at the fingertips. Any editor without intellisense-like functionality is a waste of time. Seriously.

Not to sound like a troll or anything, I used VI for years, but this is 2002, the year in which we can buy a tiny mobile phone which can be used to watch a movie on it or browse websites, so using an ascii based editor that hasn't any tricks up its sleeve besides coloring keywords is IMHO kidding yourself with irrelevant reasons like "the new stuff is not worth it, this is more productive" etc.

Re:Erm...

[sydneyfong]

Vim is scriptable.
You can implement almost ANY function in Vim provided that it can be invoked from a shell. And with the powerful shell of linux, you can almost add any kind of "tricks up its sleeve" to Vim easily.

Remember the UNIX philosophy of everything being small and doing just its own job?

Re:Erm...

[glwtta]

I use it all the time, when I am logged in remotely somewhere and need to edit config files and the like; but yeah, I hardly see the point otherwise.

Re:Erm...

[vrai]

Lots of programmers still work on big iron Unix boxes (usually the best programmers as they are often working on mission critical software handling billions of dollars a year). On these machines there is no bloatware like Visual Studio so you basically get a choice between VI, VIm, Emacs, and nedit.

Plus, on big (2+ million lines of code) systems the auto-complete intellisense stuff is as slow as a very slow thing. Because I actually know the system I'm working on I don't need the machine to figure out what a method is called: I know it already and can type it in well under a second.

Re:Erm...

[IamTheRealMike]

I think you don't understand when vi is useful. I use it all the time for editing config files etc on the command line because it starts ... instantly. I hate it's wierd syntax etc and I'm getting to like Pico, but seriously, when you just want to make a quick mod to a text file, there's nothing better. Oh - and as for "Visual Studio.NET bombs the linux developer back into the stone age", bah humbug I say! I moved to Linux because developing software is much easier with it, with Windows unless you fork out hundreds of dollars for a does-everything IDE it's a nightmare to write even the simplest of programs! VS.NET doesn't bomb nothing

Re:Erm...

[Matts]

Well, my hope is that we can replace the editing component in kate - the KDE text editor. You see vim's editing component is highly optimised, and has excellent syntax highlighting. Whereas kate is not fast (compared with vim). So it would be really nice to be able to make this the editing component for kate, and have all of kate's nice keyboard controls (Yay for CUA), combined with vim's speed.

Re:Erm...

[leuk_he]

And soon we will not need any programmers, you just paint the application we want with the mouse....

and wait until 5GL languages are there....

Then why is still 50% of my time spend on a unix prompt?

Re:Erm...

[big_hairy_mama]

First off, let me say that I actually use Emacs so I'm not (totally) just flaming.

I used VI for years, but this is 2002, the year in which we can buy a tiny mobile phone which can be used to watch a movie on it or browse websites

If I was typing on a mobile phone, I'd certainly want the automagical smart typing to allow me to type more than 1/2 word per minute. But here in 2002, computers still use keyboards, and on a keyboard I can type ~90 WPM without the help of "smart" editing.

In fact, and I do know this for a fact, smart editing actually *slows* me down. Every time the computer doesn't do what I want it to do and I have to press "Control-Z" and undo all of its "smart" capitalization, punctuation, spelling, bold-ifying, paragraph-making mistakes, I *lose* productivity. That's why when I want to type a document in an office suite (pick your choice), I generally turn off almost all of the "smart" features. It's also why I don't use Word, not because it's M$, but because it tries to do everything I don't want it to, and the damn clippy won't go away.

Granted, if you don't type 90 WPM, it might help to have it do some stuff for you. Even better (worse?), if you are like my grandma and don't know how to use the arrow keys or "Control-Z", some smart editing might make it faster to fix your little capitalization mistakes.

And in response to the first part of your comment, as you know, most people who use VI, Emacs, or other "antiquated" editors spend most of their time writing code. What happens when the computer thinks it knows what you are trying to code? It guesses the name of your method call or variable incorrectly and you end up with big nasty bugs. Bugs that are worse than a simple human spelling error because the name is actually valid and the compiler doesn't catch it. I would throw a fit if my IDE tried to do anything more invasive than doing partial-autocomplete in my method names (which Emacs and VI both can do when configured properly, IIRC (depending on the language)).

Not to mention that Emacs and VI are the only "real" editors that let me do *everything* without ever taking my hands off the keyboard. I remember a recent /. article that talked about whether there was really an advantage to this, but every time I have to reach 20cm over to the mouse I want to throw a book at the screen. Call me lazy... here ends the rant :)

Re:Erm...

[larien]

Your last point is particularly good; on my keyboard, I can move, cut, copy, paste, edit etc while keeping my hands in the centre part of the keyboard (excepting the esc key on .uk keyboards). On other editors, you either have to use the mouse or reach over to get to the arrow keys, losing productivity. Non-vi users might be surprised at how quickly I can edit a document in vi using the centre block of keys.

Re:Erm...

[anshil]

What's the big deal? VI rocked back in the days when 80x24 amber/green monitors / terminals were the thing to use, but today editors which are SMART are way more productive, since they let the developer focus on the job that has to be done, instead of looking up information that should be available at the fingertips. Any editor without intellisense-like functionality is a waste of time. Seriously.


Thats what I would call the windows way of thinking. My edtior of choice is the one beeing effektive, not the one with the most tricks in it's sleeve. Yes tricks are these things that make people ohhh and ahhh, when showing, but in a day-to-day live they hardly proove useful. vim keycodes and sequences - once you know them - are very very very effektive, I can edit files twice as fast as with i.e. visual things like visual studio. About code insight, I don't like it as it is. It doesn't show right either way, how can the editor know how the compiler really sees the file?

Re:Erm...

[JanneM]

Not to sound like a troll or anything, I used VI for years, but this is 2002, the year in which we can buy a tiny mobile phone which can be used to watch a movie on it or browse websites, so using an ascii based editor that hasn't any tricks up its sleeve besides coloring keywords is IMHO kidding yourself with irrelevant reasons like "the new stuff is not worth it, this is more productive" etc.

OK, so maybe I'm missing something here, but exactly how will the ability to watch movies on my mobile help me edit my C or Perl code on a Linux machine?

I use Gvim for pretty much all my editing needs; for me it's not a backup editor, but the editor of choice whenever I can use it. I'm using it for programming, configuration edits and I'm writing my thesis using Vim. Graphical editors are pretty, but they all lack the power and flexibility of an editor like Vim (Emacs also qualifies, but I'm from Earth and don't have the extra hands needed for all key combinations...).

There is a beginning of a Gnome component wrapping for Gvim as well, and when it's mature enough, I'll finally be able to use Vim in Evolution ass well. Ending half of my mail messages with a friendly ':wq' is a little embarrassing...

BTW: what is it with Slashdot and Gnome/KDE? Seems there's quite a bit of hostility towards Gnome among the editors lately.

/Janne

Re:Erm...

[benbean]

Looks like you could use an editor with a decent spell checker... ;-)

Re:Erm...

[anshil]

Yup, as long it integrates into mozilla :o)))

Re:Erm...

[Anonymous Coward]

>BTW: what is it with Slashdot and Gnome/KDE? Seems there's quite a bit of hostility towards Gnome among the editors lately.

That would be because Gnome sucks.

Re:Erm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Intellij IDEA one of those days (a java IDE).

Everything done with the keyboard. Smart editor. Very very impressible productivity boost. That's not emacs, but for specific task (writing java code), a specialized 'smart' editor may be the best thing.

You have to tell the beast how you format code, what prefixes you use for a ivars, accessors, etc, etc.

Then typing:

itve<TAB><TAB>myAr<C-SPACE><R ET><TAB>doS<C-SPACE><RET>

will gives you:

for (int i=0;i!=myArray.size();i++)
{

Re:Erm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking cool. Mozilla submitted this while I typed. Again

Try Intellij IDEA one of those days (a java IDE).

Everything done with the keyboard. Smart editor. Very very impressible productivity boost. That's not emacs, but for specific task (writing java code), a specialized 'smart' editor may be the best thing.

You have to tell the beast how you format code, what prefixes you use for a ivars, accessors, etc, etc.

Then typing:

itve<TAB><TAB>myAr<C-SPACE><R ET><TAB>th<C-SPACE><RET>.doS& lt;C-SPACE><RET>

will gives you:

for (int i=0;i!=myArray.size();i++)
{ Thing theThing = (Thing)myArray.at(i);
theThing.doSomething();
}

Hard to beat.

Re:Erm...

[nambit]

I've got used to using Ctrl-[ instead of Esc, my fingers are always a lot nearer those keys than esc is... and my adorable old laptop has a nipple mouse right in the middle of the keyboard, which is good too.

Re:Erm...

[big_hairy_mama]

Then typing:
itve<TAB><TAB>myAr<C-SPACE><R ET><TAB>th<C-SPACE><RET>.doS <C-SPACE><RET>

will gives you:

for (int i=0;i!=myArray.size();i++)
{ Thing theThing = (Thing)myArray.at(i);
theThing.doSomething();
}


Pretty cool demo, but a little too much for me personally :) I like to have complete control over my code (I'm very nitpicky). I woulnd't want to type th<C-SPACE><RET>.doS <C-SPACE><RET> and find out that a new method called "doSandM" has been added to theThing's class, conveniently in alphabetical order to show up first on the list. Well, I'd probably notice the mistake right away, but it's just something I don't like to have to worry about.

Besides, I find it's easier to really memorize the methods in a new API after I type them out in full a couple of dozen times :) I'm pretty quick on the board, so it doesn't bother me. Probably a whole lot quicker either way than selecting the autocomplete method from the list in a Swing class, where there are at least 500 thousand methods :)

I'll give you that Intellij IDEA is a pretty cool piece of software, among Emacs and Eclipse in my favorites list.

Re:Erm...

[vroomfondel]

Any editor without intellisense-like functionality is a waste of time. Seriously.

If your build has the feature enabled, you can use ^N/^P to navigate possible keyword completions in vim using a tags file. It's reasonably quick, and perfect for things like:

this_is_really_a_rather_long_symbol
this_is_reall y_a_rather_loud_cymbal

(The fact that having such similar identifiers is often a bad coding practice has sadly not slowed the masses.) Intellisense editors would have you type

this_is_really_a_rather_lo

before it would finally figure it out on the next keystroke. Vim, on the other hand, gives you

this_is

and then a couple of ^N's max and you're done.

Re:Erm...

[larien]

Hrm, never heard it called a nipple mouse, it's usually referred to as a "clit mouse".

Re:Erm...

[Andrew Francis]

Any editor without intellisense-like functionality is a waste of time. Seriously.

When you say Intellisense I assume you're talking about Visual Studio's nifty little tooltips, since that's what the trademark refers to.

Personally, I think that vim's keyword completion is even niftier. If I have a variable called lpszLongNameForAStringVariable, when I want to type it in I just hit lpszLo^X^N. If there's more than one match for a previously typed word beginning with "lpszLo", I can keep hitting ^N to cycle through them.

Intellisense-like stuff would be nice, but I still find that vim makes for a more comfortable environment than VS.

Re:Erm...

[cygnusx]

>and the damn clippy won't go away.

I use vim for all my editing and email, but if the clippy and auto-correct are all the objections you have against Word, then why don't you turn them off? Word has a bajillion options you know, and turning off the clippy is as easy as right clicking it, choosing options, going to the options tab of the dialog that pops up, and unchecking 'Don't use Office Assistant'. Autocorrect/autocomplete can similarly be turned off.

Re:Erm...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are full of shit if you are even thinking of claiming of writing code at 90wpm.

Furthermore, most well coded gui applications have accelerator keys for all menu options which means that you never have to leave the keyboard.

Oh and BTW, if you haven't noticed, the quality of Linux applicatiosn has improved dramatically as the linux development tools have improved.

It is really a shame that people like yourself are too ignorant too learn new ways to increase your productivity.

Or is it that you think that doing things the hard way makes you look smarter. Hate to break the news, it doesn't and most of your peers will think poorly of you.

Re:Erm...

[Anonymous Coward]

(I'm the AC you responded to)

> I like to have complete control over my code (I'm very nitpicky)

I totally agree with you.

Having typed millions (really) lines of codes, I consider lines of code as a liability, so I am pretty reluctant at anything that make the developer more productive in term of loc.

But I was really blown away by IDEA. When I have the correct idea (no pun intended) about the problem at hand that I must translate into code, anything that gets in the way destroy my concentration and lower the quality of the resulting work.

I used IDEA as a prototyping tool, and must confess that it really helped not to use immediate memory slots to remember the exact wording of the APIs I used.

But it is a double edged sword. IDEA make it very easy to end with unmaintanable code, because it is just too easy to write code with it.

As usual, it is just a tool. Btw, my original reply was just because you said something about emacs and vi beeing the only editors that let you keep your hands on the keyboard. I just wanted to cite IDEA as an exception as everything can be done with the keyboard.

Re:Erm...

[big_hairy_mama]

Hey no problem, I wasn't trying to bash you (even though you are an AC :->). I do like IDEA, just I don't personally prefer to use some of its fancier features.

Re:Erm...

[big_hairy_mama]

Please. Nobody in their write mind (including me) has or will ever claim to write 90 WPM in code. But being able to write 90 WPM in normal text (which is what I claim) was simply supposed to indicate that I am capable of typing pretty quickly, and so hitting "C-u 12 M-x do-this x y z" for a command, for me, is definitely faster than choosing the same command from a menu.

Re:Erm...

[Anonymous Coward]

> (even though you are an AC :->)

Not always been. (Have a user ID in the 15K range, but was already reading /. long before that).

A French satiric magazine have the following subtitle 'la liberte d'expression ne s'use que si l'on ne s'en sert pas' [The freedom of expression wears only if one does not make use of it.]. What's the point about having ACs if it is left to the crapflooders ?

Re:Erm...

[civilizedINTENSITY]

As well, one can compile with perl and/or python options. Like unto lisp for emacs...

Whatever next - KEmacs & GEmacs?

[ukryule]

Ah! The acid test for KDE - can it make vi usable for non unix-gurus?

Given that there is now a version of Vim for both Gnome & KDE, does it make sense for (X)Emacs to make the jump too? I know the origins of Xemacs are as much political as technical - but does it not make sense to try to branch off 2 versions of emacs into the 2 guis?

I started out making a joke post, but the more I think of it, the cooler i think Kemacs would be ...

Re:Whatever next - KEmacs & GEmacs?

[pipacs]

Given that there is now a version of Vim for both Gnome & KDE, does it make sense for (X)Emacs to make the jump too? I know the origins of Xemacs are as much political as technical - but does it not make sense to try to branch off 2 versions of emacs into the 2 guis?

First steps: XEmacs on the GTK platform.

Re:Whatever next - KEmacs & GEmacs?

[__past__]

You shouldn't compare Emacs with vi in this regard - it is more like KDE/Gnome, in that it provides an integrated environment for, well, everything, so you would rather port vi to Emacs than Emacs to KDE. Of course, this has been done long ago. KVim is just one more function in KDE that has been present in Emacs for years

Re:Whatever next - KEmacs & GEmacs?

[zoward]

Wouldn't it be called... KDEmacs ?

Re:Whatever next - KEmacs & GEmacs?

[Anonymous Coward]

vi in emacs - already done: vi mode

Re:Whatever next - KEmacs & GEmacs?

[extrasolar]

What don't you have now with emacs that you would get with a KDE port?

Re:Whatever next - KEmacs & GEmacs?

[ari_j]

You can't do this with Emacs. Emacs can't be inserted into any windowing system on any OS, because EMACS is it's own operating system.

Re:Whatever next - KEmacs & GEmacs?

[Salsaman]

Well, you could give it a nice icon menu, tooltips, etc. It could also inherit things like background colour from the window manager. KEmacs would be sweet.

Re:Whatever next - KEmacs & GEmacs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the author of gtk-xemacs was going to originally write it in Qt, but he was (then) hampered by license problems. Now, with qt being gpl, those license probs are gone, so anyone willing to do it can.

Re:Whatever next - KEmacs & GEmacs?

[bovril]

Bloat by any other name... ;)

BigMacs?

:wq

Re:Whatever next - KEmacs & GEmacs?

[Anonymous Coward]

There already is a version of Xemacs which uses the GTK+ widget set instead of raw Xlib. I can't remember the name of it, but it comes with Debian.

Re:Whatever next - KEmacs & GEmacs?

[nutshell42]

starting emacs-21.1 .....done
loading linux.el .....

Re:Whatever next - KEmacs & GEmacs?

[Cyno]

Exactly, they should just expand XEmacs into the window manager it was destined to be.

Its a good thing KDE won the desktop war.

[Bowie J. Poag]

...Otherwise, the Linux community's proposed "improvement" to Mickeysoft's infamous Start button would have been an even MORE non-intuitive looking, oddly situated stone footprint.

IMHO, what allowed KDE to win the desktop war was the fact that its developers actually listened to what their users told them. Their design choices were dictated from the demands of people below, instead of by ego-driven edicts delivered from the people above. Good ideas are never delivered by edict..only unrealistic expectations that will never be filled.

Cheers,

Google Cache

[bobdown2001]

Well it looks like we Slashdotted it already.

As usual you can view using the trusty Google cache by clicking here.

Yeah I know I know ....karma whore :0p

Re:Google Cache

[after5]

Is there a cache for the Google cache? We killed it.

Re:Google Cache

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, another important step for /. on its way to critical mass.

(1) /. mom and pop web sites
(2) /. small company web sites
(3) /. medium company sites
(4) /. Google
(5) /. the internet

This is a great day...

[ObitMan]

For the treatment of the Criminally Insane Gambler!

Move on to the links folks,

[shaunak]

Nothing to see here except a rich, stupid troll called Rob Malda.

"As everyone knows, Vim is the best (only?) text editor, and KDE is the best (only?) desktop system. "

As everyone knows, CmdrTaco is the best (only?) troll, and Timothy is the best (only?) bot.

:x Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[leuk_he]

:x saves you one key
ZZ saves you two keys.

always isomething to be learnt.
^ don't you hate those "i's" in your email. 8-)

Re::x Re:Nice, serious, but no thanks

[Pogue Mahone]

:x saves you one key
ZZ saves you two keys.

And both save you from touching the file if you didn't make any changes.

-1 flamebait!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF are u talking about?
the only desktop war is opensource-desktop-environments VS closed-source ones.

KDE and GNOME wars never really existed. If that's what you mean..

This post has been...

[Kalidor]

This post has been brought to you by the Letter K and the letter V, and the number 3.

Re:This post has been...

[leifw]

This post has been brought to you by the Letter K and the letter V, and the number 3.

Shouldn't that have been:
This post has been brought to you by the letter K, the number 4, and the letter M?

Re:This post has been...

[On Lawn]

I assume you meant

the letter K, the number 6 (vi), and the letter M

Matching #if ... #else ... #endif

[Pogue Mahone]

Does Vim support '%' on #if/#else/#endif yet? That's one of the things that stops me from switching from Elvis.

Re:Matching #if ... #else ... #endif

[owenb]

Yes, it does. Switch now!

Re:Matching #if ... #else ... #endif

[micje]

Yep, it does.

Re:Matching #if ... #else ... #endif

[peppeg]

Does Vim support '%' on #if/#else/#endif yet? That's one of the things that stops me from switching from Elvis.

At least since vim 3.0 (~1994). What kept you so long :-)

Still, if elvis does the job for you, why switch?

Peppe

Re:Matching #if ... #else ... #endif

[brucet]

I'm pretty sure I remember using this feature in vim in 1995, so yes!

Also extremely useful is '[#' which brings you to the top of a preprocessor conditional you are in. These are absolutely critical to avoid going insane in painfully #ifdef'd code.

-Bruce

Re:Flamewar attempt

[Anonymous Coward]

GTK was/is LGPLed
QT is now GPLed

No, please don't!

[Vic]

I don't want to have to put up with people saying (GNU|X)/(K|G)/Emacs! :)

Nah

[NiftyNews]

The Union of KVim? I worked with a couple of guys in that union last year. They were always trying to get me to join. It got kinda creepy when they started bringing all of those animals out of such a tiny car...

Re:Flamewar attempt

[Pogue Mahone]

Kindling - poo! It's Napalm!

BTW:
Writing a Haiku
In seventeen syllables
Is not very hard
;-)

Why didn't Mr. Taco just say...

[Rhinobird]

Why didn't Mr. Taco just say "in the red corner, VI and KDE, in the blue corner EMACS and GNOME, this is the MOTHER of all flamewars! FIGHT!"

Re:Why didn't Mr. Taco just say...

[popeyethesailor]

Gawddamn it, its Blue for VI and KDE. Dinn you know?

Re:Why didn't Mr. Taco just say...

[blank]

no kidding. this is total bait for a flameware. i almost bit it myself. i will instead remain calm and ESC:wq before i get offended by some of the remarks.

oh what the hell, it's only bandwidth. flame on. =)

Re:Why didn't Mr. Taco just say...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why didn't Mr. Taco just say "in the red corner, VI and KDE, in the blue corner EMACS and GNOME, this is the MOTHER of all flamewars! FIGHT!"

Actually, it's KVIM for the red corner.

The original VI and my 1975 VT100 "user interface" will be judging the whole damn thing.

Re:Why didn't Mr. Taco just say...

[Enonu]

Yeah, we all know that Emacs users are pinko bastards.

Re:Why didn't Mr. Taco just say...

[cheetham]

I've kinda waiting for KPico to be honest. :-)

I've never been much of a fan of vim... too steep a learning curve... it takes a certain type of person to use vim. ;)

Re:Flamewar attempt

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you dance around a campfire if GNOME shut down? Can't stand a little bit of honest competition? Rather than let the KDE project speak for itself, you'd rather see the GNOME project go the way of the dodo?

Yeah, figures. Stupid fucking KDE bigot.

vi? emacs?

[Anonymous Coward]

join the 21st century, please. these editors are fine if youre stuck at the command line (no X session going), but comn, there are some really snaxxy IDEs out there, and other platforms (as an OS X user, i use emacs at the command line, but BBEdit for my daily coding tasks)

dreamer

[hokanomono]

I thought KDE was one of the few things that Emacs users hate more than vim.

Re:dreamer

[Psiren]

Nope, I use both. I use vim too, but only for editing remotely or small config files. Writing code in vim is a pain.

Role reversal

[Faux_Pseudo]

Lets look at this from the other side, the emacs side. With emacs you can have a browser in your editor. While you are at it you can have your shell and tetris and mail, news and and and. I am not here to expose the virtue of emacs but to instead ask why this took so long and what real bennies this will have. I can more than see the good of vi embeded with kdevelop but I would much rather use emacs as my IDE for its stablity reasons. Even if emacs was embeded in konq I would still rather use emacs by its self because konq has a habit of crashing on anything less that 128 meg of real memory. Why dont the vim developers work on makeing a vim with an IDE rather than having other work on embeding vim in other apps?

Karma goes down by several points for unpopular oppinion.

Re:Role reversal

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't involve (X)emacs - it works well only for smart people. What most of people are not. That's why such VIM projects are still around.

Re:Role reversal

[awol]

Why dont the vim developers work on makeing a vim with an IDE rather than having other work on embeding vim in other apps

Magnificent troll

Re:Role reversal

[blank]

well... flying a space shuttle only works for smart people too. what's your point?

don't call vim users stupid. some of them write the good program that you use. some of them also sysadmin the systems that maintain your network.

Re:Role reversal

[micje]

Hey, VIM's got tetris as well.

Re:Role reversal

[lost_it]

Why dont the vim developers work on makeing a vim with an IDE rather than having other work on embeding vim in other apps?

You've just hit on the big difference between vim mentality and emacs mentality. Vim users want something small and can be used anywhere. Emacs users want something that can do anything. It's a subtle difference, but important.

So emacs people write other programs for emacs, while vim people write vim for other programs.

Both methods have their advantages. Choose whichever one suits your needs best, or if you can manage to remember how to use both, then use both as you see fit.

Re:Role reversal

[caca_phony]

what are you talking about? vim is the biggest and slowest vi out there. hell, microemacs is smaller, loads faster and is easier to use. ($VISUAL is nvi on my machine, though).

Aceticon's lessons

[Aceticon]

Lesson number 1:

Question: How to start a flame war?
Answer: One word - Emacs

Let me be the frist to say it

[Cally]

Vim? Does it have a calendar? Eliza? news? web? programming language? inline shell? holidays? more to the point, have they fixed that awful bug where you have to press three or four keys to change it from overtyping to inserting or deleting? How could anyone think that was a good idea?

OK I'm trolling, but goddamit I'm trolling for emacs AND I'M PROUD OF IT!! (Anyway, c'mon, what do you expect with a story like that?? "Vim the only text editor"?? Are you mad? As it happens I'm half-way through an install of Mandrak 8.2 on the machine next to this one - sure looks like there's more than one text editor there... fgs there's two versions of emacs alone (four including -nox)...

Re:Let me be the frist to say it

[Anonymous Coward]

> Vim? Does it have a calendar? Eliza? news? web?
> programming language? inline shell? holidays?

Nah. Because unlike Emacs, it attempts to be a _text editor_, and nothing else. And it does the job well, IMHO.

Emacs is probably nice, but I'm a minimalist, and I simply prefer to use a specialiced web browser like mozilla for browsing, a news reader like slrn for news reading, and so on.

There's something wrong with calling Emacs a "text editor", if it is all of those other things at the same time.

Re:Let me be the frist to say it

[blank]

what's so good about vim? it doesn't come with a calender, a browser or the AI language. if you have to edit a 10k file, there is less overhead and it will strip down to fit on a rescue floppy disk if you subtract all that gvim gui nonsense.

the feature of having multifacits key typing is for the day when motion detecting is use for input. all the vim users will have an inherent twitch that will be reconizable to these devices and thus make them superior.

the beauty of vim is that you can flick people off while typing in code and without taking your hand off the keyboard. plus you don't have the distraction of pron from the web or usenet.

woohoo, this is fun. i'm going to waste more bandwidth.

Re:Let me be the frist to say it

[anshil]

In vim hit the keyboard key "insert", it switches between overwrite and insert.

Re:Let me be the frist to say it

[Anonymous Coward]

Vim?

Yes

Does it have a calendar?

Yes

Eliza? news? web?

No. Vim is a text editor.

programming language?

Yes. Vim has a built-in scripting language.

inline shell?

Yes and no. There is a shell :sh, but it may or may not fit your definition of inline.

holidays?

No. It is a text editor.

more to the point, have they fixed that awful bug where you have to press three or four keys to change it from overtyping to inserting or deleting?

Yes. If you've configured your system correctly, press Insert.

How could anyone think that was a good idea?

Maybe they kindly thought about people who have no skills in configuring their system, the like who bitch about the Insert key.

This post brought to you by Vim.

PS. Vim can also check your text for spelling errors.

Re:Let me be the frist to say it

[Cally]

Little-known fact: although it's true that there's an 18Mb monster emacs package and tons of ludicrous plugins (web browsers..?!), there are in fact stripped down minimal binaries (and source packages.) See your friendly local GNU ftp archive mirror.

you don't need it

[Anonymous Coward]

{K|G}(X)emacs doesn't make any sense. In (X)emacs you feel your independence: you have virtually everything: web, mail, newc, programming, file commander, calendar, diary, etc etc etc

It's like a swamp - if you come inside it's hard to come back outside. You don't want to come back. You are addicted. Only your death will heal you.

It's more likey that (X)emacs people will create their one desktop environment. If you know (X)emacs you know that it's pretty close to it.

Imagine desktop environment working virually the same way in X11 as well as from a command line :)

Re:Flamewar attempt

[JanneM]

But most wouldn't. The sad fact is that most users see nothing wrong with having a choice. There's a small but vocal group from both camps that seem out to whip up as much hostility as they can, and sadly, it seems some /. editors are among them (just see the rather skewed gnome item in the 'development' channel).

With the steadily improving interoperability between these two environments, it is easier and easier to run applications for either and just use the desktop that makes you happy. Why care? Why look for a 'winner'? Instead, appreciate the flexibility that a choice of multiple desktop environments gives us (where Gnome and KDE are just the two most visible alternatives).

/Janne

Emacs would have been though to embed in Konq.

[eiggen]

If you think of it, vi is probably better suited for embedding in other apps. The keybindings used in vi are more "compatible" with modern GUI apps, while Emacs has keybindings that would map OVER kde or gnome or whatever... I mean, would the ALT-[bla] or CTRL-[bla] key sequences be received by embedded emacs or by konqueror? It is obvious that vi wins in that respect.

It seems clear to me that Emacs is a full featured OS ;-) that wants to live on its own while vi is an editor that is easily embeddable.

So you REALLY want to have a Vim und KDE???

[Qbertino]

As far as I know (me mucho Linux nOOby), the great advantage of the Vim (aside of it's countless downsides of which one is "looking like someone shat on your screen") is that you can run it via telnet with a 9600 baud conection using something like a basic calculator as a keyboard.

What's next? Porting Emacs to QT/KDE? Or rather the other way around, QT to emacs. Which - considering that emacs seems kinda like an OS in itself - could actually be easier.

How about jEdit? Anyone tried that yet? It actually supports more than 2 bit color without requireing a port... (although it is a little sluggish I admit)

Re:So you REALLY want to have a Vim und KDE???

[blank]

i tried jedit... but ended up add too many extra chars to my text. my text file was riddled with :w jjdw %s/flame bait/fun topic/g :set nowrap ... i said :set nowrap

grr ESC:wq

CmdrTaco...

[Pyrosz]

is trolling with this line:

As everyone knows, Vim is the best (only?) text editor, and KDE is the best (only?) desktop system. Heh.

Taco: you should know better than that by now!

Cream with KVim?

[digitect]

Easy to use Vim? Don't you mean Cream?

</shameless plug>

Re:Cream with KVim?

[dmarien]

cream includes a calendar?! man -- that is so not vi(m).

Re:Cream with KVim?

[gid]

I tried cream just last week, the unfortunate side effect that it made the console mode vim really damn confusing, because there's no menu system with it, and maybe my remote console didn't have all ctrl keys and such working right, I'm not sure.

But when used with gvim, it's great. It takes the "vi" out of "vim" leaving you with just, "m".

Oh Ned! You ARE a vi man after all!

[jdfox]

http://www.darryl.com/vi.shtml

For GNOME...

[reynaert]

There's a similar project for GNOME, called Gnome-vim (screenshot). AFAIK, it is only useable with Evolution.

Hey...

[SomeOtherGuy]

Finally a good reason to try KDE.

Re:Hey...

[Anonymous Coward]

damn you're right about that!

What do you get?

[really_blurry]

"the power of VIM with KDE's friendliness"

What do you get then? Something that is almost user friendly?

Oh boy!

[supabeast!]

User-friendly VIM! I can't wait! Nothing sounds kludgely like a mouseless text editor with mouse support!

*sigh*

Re:Oh boy!

[PurpleBob]

You do know that GVim has been around for quite a while, right?

Three Words (to start with)

[fm6]

Cut-and-paste.

When I fell back into the Unix/Linux world some four years ago, my biggest crisis was finding a text editor. The obvious choice for me was Vi in a term window (I've been using Vi since Jimmy was president). Alas using it in a windowing environment presented special problems. The big one is that I kept forgetting which mode I was in. Maybe you can have a half-dozen windows open and keep a state diagram of every one in your head. I can't. I needed an editor that was stateless, or at least less stateful than vi(m)-in-a-window.

Lucky for me, this was right when the Vim people perfected GVim, a version that integrated itself with various windowed environment. A paste is a paste, never mind what mode you're in. That by itself was enough for me to send a check to Bram's orphans. (I assume everybody else has?) The rest -- macros, synax colors, incremental search, being able to use the same editor on different platforms -- was just gravy.

So we've actual had this personna-defying version of Vim for quite some time. The Linux port uses GNOME widgets, but runs under KDE, no problem.

Also, you shouldn't assume that Vim is strictly for keep-my-hands-on-the-keyboard geeks. I know people who are put off by the weird modal keystrokes that Vim inherited from Vi. But they use Vim anyway, because it's the best comprimise available between power and functionality. Most editors are either to limited (KEdit) or infected with Feature Elephantitis (EMACS). Vim strikes a nice balance.

Re:Three Words (to start with)

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are using nvi (the default on FreeBSD), you can put "set showmode" in your ~/.exrc file, and then vi will say what mode it is in, in the bottom right corner of your screen. What I'd really like though is something that would be more visible, like change the background color of your screen to red if you are in command mode. Then you don't have to look down at the corner of your screen -- you immediately know what mode you are in.

Re:Three Words (to start with)

[HiThere]

Vim is my second-choice general purpose editor. My first choice is nedit, because it's easy to customize for languages that weren't forseen at the time the editor was built.

I'm sure that Vim can be made to do this, but I've never bothered. Vim is my choice of editor without question in a non-graphics environment, but when it is moved to a graphics environment ... it suffers.

Emacs to me appears to be the ideal single editor for a non-graphics environment (i.e., no graphics environment is available). It lets you get as fancy as you need to. Vim is a much simpler editor that is quick to learn, but specialized ... it doesn't try to do everything. And it's the editor that you include on an emergency floppy (unless you only have room for pico [or is it nano?]).

But when one expands into a full system with windowing available ... sometimes a really simple editor is still necessary, but usually I prefer nedit. This is because most of the time the editing that I want to do is some kind of program, and I can teach nedit to handle anything that gre(p) can parse. And I can set tab widths to a 3 without having the program turn them into spaces. I find this quite important, especially for Python programs. (If nests get too deep, I compensate by re-setting the tab widths from 3 to 2.)

Re:VIM is for twats

[Cheesy Fool]

> Get some fucking windows too.

Windows? i've got a lot of them, as a matter of fact i'm looking out of one right now.

Peace brothers

[KjetilK]

I'm using Emacs on KDE3 right now. If we sit down together and talk, I'm sure we can get an understanding without bloodshed. :-)

Is this "innovation"? Think again.

[bhorling]

I'm highly suspicious of this "integration" process. This uncessary addition of vim into KDE will deprive consumers of real choice, potentially leading to a stranglehold in the up-and-coming field of text editors. Will retailers have the option of replacing Kvim with a component of their own choosing? What will happen to the Kemacs, Kpico, and the just-started Ked projects? I've read before that KDE has not been developed with modularity in mind, making Kvim's removal impractical at best, so we may be witnessing a thinly-veiled attempt by KDE to subsume the entire editor market. Before we jump on the bandwagon here expousing the virtues of this marriage, we should take a lesson from history and recognize the many subtle consequences of this action.

The mind boggles.

[Bud]

This is just what Linux needs to succeed on the desktop! So simple, even your grandma could use it!

I think these guys should start a company aiming to provide KVim as an ASP solution for all the enterprises out there, then go IPO and make a fortune.

Now could you please XEmacs21 to PalmOS, please?

--Bud

Re:The mind boggles.

[stevew]

Now how the HECK would you be able to hold down all those keys to do anything with either a Palm keyboard or handwriting mode??

At least with VI you could actually think about it.

You wouldn't want to do it - but you could consider it.

.

Another approach (Emacs?)

[Ed Avis]

There are two ways to get vi / emacs / your-favourite-editor embedded into konqueror or kmail or whatever. Either make it into a 'component' which visually sits inside the konqueror window, or write a lightweight component which calls out to a separate editor process. Think about Emacs's 'server mode' where you set $EDITOR to 'emacsclient' and your currently-running Emacs is used as an external editor.

You could have a KDE editor component which just displays the text and a big 'edit' button; the button when pressed launches $EDITOR, which could be Emacs or whatever. It wouldn't look as nice as embedding kvim directly into the app's window, but it should work with all editors, with no special KDEification needed for each one.

Re:Another approach (Emacs?)

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that is why KMail has support for an external editor for quite some time already. :-)

Cheers,
Waldo

bastian@kde.org

Let's really roll in the protagonists

[Epeeist]

> Why didn't Mr. Taco just say "in the red corner, VI and KDE, in the blue corner EMACS and GNOME, this is the MOTHER of all flamewars! FIGHT!"

Got to get Xemacs involved in this too. Then we could have RMS and Jamie Zawinski as tag partners.

Re:Let's really roll in the protagonists

[march]

No need for tag team. Either having Jamie scaring everone with a new hairdoo and RMS scaring everyone with his singing would be enough. :-)

/greg

Great!

[Dwonis]

Now how long until we get KDE for Emacs?

Re:Great!

[bullgod]

Speaking as a non-emacs user: not long I hope.
If there is a KEmacs and a KVim, then hopefully plugging-in on your favourite editor to applications like Kdevelop is only just round the corner.
My main objection to using IDEs is that you are restricted to build-in editor, this kind of co-operation should lead to the best of both worlds.

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the point dickweed
he said KDE for emacs, not emacs for kde!

Re:Great!

[pizen]

I think you missed the original poster's joke.

Re:Great!

[nutshell42]

Nah, then you always had to choose between vi-mode and kvim to demonstrate vi users their inferiority (scnr - no flames please =)

WinXP for XEmacs, on the other hand, could be a great way to piss off Gnu/RMS

VIM going down the wrong path

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember when VIM was lean and mean. But have things taken a turn for the worse?

VIM keeps growing and becoming more bloated (is that the fate of all software?).
I'm afraid that VIM is becoming the vi equivalent of Emacs. Not pretty.

Re:VIM going down the wrong path

[Anonymous Coward]

Vim is for people who hate Emacs
NVI is for people who love VI .

Re:VIM going down the wrong path

[scotch]

Vim compilation is very customizable - you can turn off the features you don't like. Even with "big" features compiled in on my system, the executable will still fit on a floppy with room to spare.

HTH

Re:VIM going down the wrong path

[caca_phony]

Mr Coward sir, I never thought we would be in such agreement as at this moment.
$ echo $VISUAL
/usr/bin/nvi

Comments from a long-time Vim user.

[Surak]

While I agree with you in part, the part of about using all the funky keystrokes that boost your productivity, I disagree that at GUI version of VIM is less useful.

For one, the support for native GNOME (in the case of GVIM) and KDE (in the case of KVIM) clipboards, without having to go into the xterm window and keep on marking a "screenful" at a time and then scroll, mark another screenful, scroll, etc....with GVIM and KVIM, you can copy these to the clipboard easily like any other GUI editor.

If KVIM is anything like GVIM, it will have native support for KDE printing functionality, something non-existant in a console vim.

The fact that, as someone mentioned, it is a KPART means that other applications can use it. So, for instance, Konqueror could KVIM for the little text editor window that I'm typing in right now and I'd get full Vi-style editing functionality, something that would ROCK if you ask me personally. :)

Also, adding the menus and buttons give you useful stuff like File Open dialogs. Typing in a long pathname on ':e ' command line is a REAL royal PITA. I'd rather just point and click, thank you.

Embedding Emacs in KDE??

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely it should be the other way around.. :-)

Re:Is this "innovation"? Think again.

[MeWub]

KDE comes with a service called the "KTrader". You can ask it for a list of 'KParts' which are associated with a certain filetype. Wether this is (K|G)VimPart or say, Kate is a matter of taste. You don't like KVimPart ? Edit the filetype and tell it to embed Kate instead.

Vim in text box ???

[Etyenne]

The article talk about embedding Vim in Konqueror. Unfortunately, I can't reach the site to read the details (/.ed), but if that mean I can use Vim in textbox (such as the one typing in right now), then I am really excited.

That will double my productivity when posting to /. :)

YAHOO!!

[Billly Gates]

I can finally leave Visual C++ behind. I hate the platform but love the ide and the syntax highlighting, font support from the built in editor even though the macro support sucks compared to vi or emacs. The built in editor in kdevelop sucks sucks goat balls and is close to unusable. No smart indenting, bad font support, no quick commands like dd to delete entire lines or space folding like VIm. I know in unix version of VIM you can just do a :make projectname inside gvim itself but I miss the built in debugger, as well as the docs in Vstudio. For example when you have a snytax error in VC, the debugger just goes to the appropriate line so you can fix it. Using a seperate program just tells you the line number and you have to move to the line yourself to fix it.

It seems odd in the early 21st century to be using only an editor and nothing else to do any real development work. I hate launching ddd, GVim, and kdevelop seperatly for coding, debuging, and looking up documentation. My solution was to enhance my coding skills a little more and actually write a version of Vim and litteraly call it Kvim and then try to use kparts to integrate it with kdevelop. Exactly like what these guys are doing. They beat me to it. Oh well. It would of looked good on my resume. Anyway I will be the first to download it and try it out. This is a must needed godsend for unix and linux. Its hard to convince people to switch when using old command line editors from bash like vi. ALso the unix approach to a problem is to have alot of smaller programs that do one thing well and to use them all together. vim and kdevelop fullfill this idea well.

Licensing problems?

[SLi]

From the KVim page:

KVim is released under the smae 'charityware' licence as vim. Please see the vim website for more info.

Why do I smell licensing problems here? That is, unless the developers have a commercial Qt license, they are required to distribute any software linked with Qt under the GNU GPL.

I believe that would be the second time, as Vim was previously linked with libgpm (I don't know if it currently is), which is also distributed under the GNU GPL.

Re:Licensing problems?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Why do I smell licensing problems here? That is, unless the developers have a commercial Qt license, they are required to distribute any software linked with Qt under the GNU GPL.

We've looked into that, but we've figured that kdelibs stuff is exempted by trolltech. kdelibs itself is lgpl, and most of kde is a hodgepodge of GPL, lgpl, artistic, BSD licenses.

Conclusion: not everything that links to Qt that also links to kdelibs has to be GPL.

Re:Licensing problems?

[Anonymous Coward]

Qt is licensed under the GPL _AND_ the QPL. As long as kvim is compatible with one of those then there is no licensing problem.

Cheers,
Waldo

Why vi?

[haggar]

Something that everyone here seems to forget: the great advantage of vi compared to all other editors in Unix: you can trust it will be there, on any system, in any condition. Of course, this is not a big deal if you are a "normal" user, but if you are an administrator, expecially one who gets his hands dirty in day-to-day problems and accidents, you know how good it feels to have an editor in single-user mode, and to know that it will be available on any Unix platform!

(Except for HP-UX: I noticed that I have no editor whatsoever, in single-user mode, until i mount -a. Weird. No, not even a line editor)

KVim page mirror settled

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello, We've mirrored the kvim homepage at http://freenux.org/mirrors/kvim/. Thanx all of your for your attention. We managed being slashdotted once, but this one is too hard.

Re:KVim page mirror settled

[lch]

The correct for the main page is: http://freenux.org/mirrors/kvim/

This is hosted by TuxFamily.org the french free software hosting service.

whyyyyy??!!? (crying)

[nslu]

that is what i was always talking about -- vim in mozilla! gtk vim component existed forever, and still we are all stuck with brainless mozilla

fun with acronyms

[al3x]

EMACS = Endangered Microcosm of Anti-Componentization?

/.ed already....

[Anonymous Coward]

/.ed already.... Looks like they should have been using IIS.

Silly rabbits never learn...

Re:Flamewar attempt

[Anonymous Coward]

> You'd rather see the GNOME project go the way of the dodo?

Sure cocksucking, motherfucking, Ximian monkey nigga corporate powah tool.

-CmdrTaconutz

Great for me

[ceswiedler]

I'm a KDE user and a GVIM fan, so this is absolutely great. I use GVIM under Windows as well, which helps me keep some unity and sanity to my text editing. I particularly love the search and replace power of Vi (basically full sed scripts, inline) and often spawn it from VC++ to do complex searches-and-replaces. I've read that you can replace the VC++ editor with GVIM using OLE, which I might try too.

I do like Konquerer's file manager mode (Mozilla is much better IMO for the web), particularly the CLI attached to the bottom of the window. In fact, I often use it to spawn GVIM to edit a file... Being able to bring up GVIM inline to do text editing would be a dream.

Vim has ruined me...(Conspiracy?)

[d_force]

Never before have I pressed the ESC so often while working in an editor. If I could change one thing, it would be "automatic-ESC detection" -- basically, the editor would auto-hit ESC whenever it felt you were finished editing a line. By being conditioned to hit that really annoying key every time, my typing productivity has decreased in almost every other editor... hitting ESC everytime, which does nothing.

Personally, I'd love to see a study done where we take some Windows gimp, lock em in a room for 48-hrs forcing them to only use Vim -- then gauge the decrease in productivity using any other editor.

The point: Ironically, if I were designing an editor for money, I would probably do the same thing: make all users of my editor be extremely dependent upon it, through inventing some creepy keystroke combo via conditioning... such that the user's productivity dramatically decreases using any other editor.

True, this can be said about Emacs or numerous other editors... I just hope M$ doesn't get any ideas; last thing I want to do is hit Ctrl-ESC for everything.

-- dforce

Re:Vim has ruined me...(Conspiracy?)

[Bad SU]

Oh, but there have been many improvements in the escape keystroke over the years.

First we had ^3^[
Then, simply ^[

Now, it's only *one* key. Is there any another keystroke you can think of that has gone through the exhaustive RnD, innovation, and human interface studies that ESC has? I think not!

Not a flame, btw, just an amusing thought. It simply did not turn out that way in print.

funny... the C-X C-x makes a lot of sense...

[EnderWiggnz]

it actually makes the most sense out of *any* unix text editor.

why?

try this excersize.

cat>some_file
type here.

... now how do you save, and exit editting from this? thats right - Ctrl-X (EOF character) Ctrl-C .

thats why emacs uses that key combo

Re:The reasons KDE sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

> 1. Slow - It's just too slow. the slower of all window managers under linux.

That proves that you are a moron. KDE isn't a window manager. And KDE3 is faster than GNOME 1.4.

> Conclusions: Here is a Living proof that OOP is not always suitable. All the inheritance that is going on makes even simple applications running really slow.

Uh, every major modern desktop environment (and OS) is written in OOP. KDE is. GNOME is. Windows's graphical portions are. MacOSX's graphical portions are.

So, whatchutalkin about?

GVIM / Kdevelop

[HalB]

This is probably the greatest user interface advance for developers I can think of. To have the power of vim for editing, plus being able to ebug in vim, setting breakpoints, stepping through code, etc. I drool at the thought.

What a coup.

Re:funny... the C-X C-x makes a lot of sense...

[big_hairy_mama]

I thought EOF was C-d. Maybe I'm wrong; can someone explain the difference?

Re:funny... the C-X C-x makes a lot of sense...

[Anonymous Coward]

so why doesn't emacs have a Ctrl-D save and exit key?

vim / vi sucks

[Ender Ryan]

Simply put, vim/vi, is the worst, most user-unfriendly text editor... ever.

At least for a person like myself, who has a horrible memory. There are WAY to many different commands. I have learned to use vi on at LEAST 5 different occasions, everything from text selection, cut/past, regex search/replace, etc. Every single time, I come into the office the next day, try to continue using vi, and... I can't remember how to use the goddam thing!

Further, what is the damn reason for the different modes, command mode, visual mode? WTF? It basically serves no practical purpose. Other excellent text editors implement all the same features without resorting to such asinine things...

And on top of that, vim, being the de facto text editor on Linux/Unix, is seriously slowing down the adoption of Linux. When a newbie starts learning how to use a machine, and they're reading a manual or a book that tells them to edit a file using vi, how many times out of 100 do you think they're going to get extremely frustrated and say, "The hell with this, what the fuck?" My guess would be at least 95.

Simply put, I fucking hate that editor! ;-)

I hate emacs too, BTW, it's a horribly bloated operating system. *ducks*

No, I don't like pico either.

For quick editing of simple config files I use pico, for everything else I use nedit(which is possibly the best text editor ever... if only it didn't use Motif).

Re:vim / vi sucks

[blank]

Further, what is the damn reason for the different modes, command mode, visual mode? WTF? It basically serves no practical purpose. Other excellent text editors implement all the same features without resorting to such asinine things...

what other editors let you navigate using keyboard commands? i know most people are frustrated with this feature but it's helpful if you're scrolling up or down without having to use the arrow keys. otherwise the movement keys would be useless

once you get use to vim though, other editors become annoying and this is probably a good reason for not using vim. i was using BBEDIT and got frustrated having to hit the menu or a key combination to do a search for text. then i started to miss being able to scroll up or down the exact amount of pages without using the mouse. if i wanted to delete a word i had to position the mouse, highlight or double click on the word and then hit the delete key or use the cut option from the mouse menu key. this isn't a big deal unless you're use to the swiftness of just typing in "dw" [delete word].

with that said, my advice is to stay the hell away from vim. once you get use to it, it may ruin you for other editors.

Re:vim / vi sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

You think vim is counter-intuitive? God help you when you're using emacs.

Re:vim / vi sucks

[edyu]

Vim is something you have to get used to. It's like snowboarding. You cannnot just do it for one day and after falling on your asses for all day and just call it quit. Vim is something that the more you use it, the more you love it. Yes, after you get used to it, all the other editors seems slow and unproductive. It's productivity that vim users are after, not ease of use. You can write code in notepad but it's going to be much slower. Vim is great for making changes to the content in the minimal time. You might want to buy "Learning vi" to really learn it right. After you work on it for 3 days, you will know what I mean.
The main thing is that there is no point to say some editor sucks without understanding it. You can use whatever editor you want. Another thing, to really use vim in its potential get a good keyboard with the sun layout.

KVigor?

[CptNerd]

Vim for KDE, does this mean someone will port Vigor to KDE? KVigor?

Other way around...

[bytes256]

You would have to embed KDE and GNOME into Emacs because Emacs is an OS that just happens to edit text

The '%'

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the sinlge biggest feature of vi in all of its incarnations.

I am not a C programmer, but do a lot of maintenance on it anyway, and that feature makes a world of difference in other peoples code.

MDI in vim?

[RelliK]

The one thing I hate about vim/gvim is the inability to do MDI. I want to be able to edit multiple documents at a time and copy/paste text between them. The split window just sucks. If you open two separate vim windows, then the only way to copy paste is with the mouse. Then there is some funky way to cycle between open files in the same window, but then you actually need to save the current file and open the next one. All of these methods suck. So, is there or are there any plans for a *real* MDI in vim? I'd like that even more than KDE integration.

Re:MDI in vim?

[Zelatrix]

If you "set hidden" then you no longer have to save the current file when opening the next one.

This means that your funky buffer-switching commands, like "ls", "badd file" and "buffer n", or the keyboard shortcut "n CTRL-^" all work the way you want them to.

You get warned if you try and exit with any hidden files unsaved.

Re:MDI in vim?

[RelliK]

thanks a lot! That's what I was looking for. Now is there a way to have it list all the class names and/or use class member complestion?

Re:MDI in vim?

[brucet]

If you open two separate vim windows, then the only way to copy paste is with the mouse.

If you set guioptions=a the selected text is copied to the clipboard when the VISUAL mode is set or ends (such as with a yank). Then you can paste from the clipboard register in another instance of vim using '"*p'. So I can do all my copying and pasting between vims (and other applications) without ever touching the mouse.

I'm not sure what else you're hoping for. Do you really want one of those windows-within-a-window UI's? I've never seen what people liked about that, and I see that even MS Word is now going away from it in Word 2000. To each his own...

-Bruce

Re:MDI in vim?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pressing ^N or ^P in insert mode complete the current word (repeat the keystroke until it is correct). It isn't context sensitive though.

BRIEF R.I.P.

[SpinyNorman]

Actually, the best editor ever was BRIEF by Underware, an awesome PC editor then got sucked up by Borland and disappeared.

When I switched to Unix from DOS an aeon ago, the first thing I did was look for a decent editor, and was incredulous that people actually used vi - a line editor!! - for real work. The absolute minimal requirements for a productive editor are modeless, mouse cut and paste and off-the-cuff macro record/playback. I ended up choosing emacs and configuring the keys like BRIEF.

You're right about nedit though - it's an excellent editor and I use it on occasion to do stuff like complicated search/replaces that I've never bothered to learn with emacs (how does emacs refer to wildcarded bits of what you searched for in the replace string?).

Re:BRIEF R.I.P.

[nvrrobx]

I never could get used to BRIEF - I was spoiled by QEdit 2.15 in DOS. Wordstar keys, and I tweaked it to compile my Turbo Pascal code just by hitting F9...

I've long since given up on something like QEdit. SemWare screwed up with The Semware Editor, and ever since, I've gone back to vim. I guess all the years of being stuck with vi on Solaris at work weren't wasted, it made the transition to vim much easier ;)

Re:funny... the C-X C-x makes a lot of sense...

[YetAnotherLogin]

Yeah. Whatever you say. The reason for C-X is that it stands for C-eXit. Everybody knows that EOF is C-d.

Re:Woohoo

[moderators_are_w*nke]

Why is Windows bashing insightful and Linux bashing flamebait?

Names

[Snafoo]

I think we're going to witness the developmental evolution of KDE application naming.

Simply prefixing the program with the letter 'k' is not enough, as those lamers developers over at Gnome can simply take the same program, s/qt/gtk+/g, and s/^k/g/g. How's a KDE developer to cope?

Here's an idea: Give all KDE apps girl's names. We have Kate; now all we need is Kim, Kamilla, Katherine, Kookie, Koko, Kitty, and so forth.

Gnome will no longer be able to follow. Aside from 'gertrude', there aren't that many female names beginning with the letter G. And in any case, what are they going to call 'gnome-kate'? Gate? Gkate? Gnate?

Mwahaha! Now all we need is a non-crashing build of KDE3.0, and we shall rule the world!

Re:funny... the C-X C-x makes a lot of sense...

[EnderWiggnz]

try the excersize.

cat>yo_moms_a_ho
type something here
C-X C-c

thats where emacs gets in from.

god bless integration?

[ralian]

I'm taking Cal II now, and let me tell you, I curse integration to hell every day.

Not bad at all

[X-Nc]

> As everyone knows, Vim is the best (only?) text
> editor, and KDE is the best (only?) desktop system.
> Heh.

Vim is definitely my favorite editor. I find it easier and faster to use than any others. However, compaired to XFce, KDE is quite a bit slow and old-fassioned. Maybe KDE 3 will come close to having the feature set and capabilities that XFce does. I can't wait to try it.

Re:Flamewar attempt

[Anonymous Coward]

And developing closed-source software to run with Qt means a real financial ass-raping from TrollTech. It costs most to develop software for KDE than it does for Windows.

wait... am I understanding this right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok is this just a gui version of vim that adds a tool bar and crap? (if thats the case then this is extremely lame)

or is this a replacement for the standard kde text editor dialog. In other words does this let me use vi to edit emails, and fill out forms on the web, and all that good stuff?

-fox

Re:funny... the C-X C-x makes a lot of sense...

[jsprat]

You are confused. Ctrl-D is eof on unix, Ctrl-Z on Windows. Ctrl-X is a perfectly valid character in a file.

Hit enter before hitting Ctrl-C and your Ctrl-X will become part of the file.

Or, try anything (well, almost) then Ctrl-C. You will find that all the lines but the one you hit Ctrl-C on will be in the file.

Example:

$ cat > some_file
test
garbage and crap <-- Ctrl-C here

$ cat some_file
test

Ctrl-C kills cat before it can write the last line to the file.

Re:funny... the C-X C-x makes a lot of sense...

[armb]

> I thought EOF was C-d. Maybe I'm wrong; can someone explain the difference?

Yes - the difference is you're right, and the previous poster doesn't know what he's talking about.

(Actually C-d is the character usually used interactively to signal that you want an end of file. EOF as defined in stdio.h isn't a character at all, which is why getc() and getchar() return ints (casting the result to char before comparing with EOF is a common mistake)).

Re:funny... the C-X C-x makes a lot of sense...

[Anonymous Coward]

EOF is ctrl-z; ctrl-d is carriage-return.

God, I love VIM!

[Anonymous Coward]

VIM, will you marry me?

Showmode is Evil

[fm6]

Actually, showmode goes back to the original vi. But remembering to stop and look at the texts at the bottom of the window is just as hard as remembering what state you left the app in. The only thing showmode is good for is teaching vi to newbies who don't understand the concept of state.

And why should they? It's an obsolete concept, at least in UI design. If I had the time (and were a better programmer) I'd take the Bram's basic editor engine (which really is very good) and build a modern UI on top of it.

arrow keys?

[Ender Ryan]

What is wrong with using the arrow, page up/down keys? So many vim lovers complain about this with other editors, but come on, that's ridiculous! I use the arrow keys so quick it's virtually like any other keystroke, perhaps twice the time maybe. And what is the big deal anyway, in vim you have to toggle your mode before you can move around, so it's about equal anyway, except in any other editor it's actually intuitive!

Bah! People who like vim are weird ;-)

Re:arrow keys?

[Anonynnous Coward]

Good touch typists can be much faster in an editor which doesn't require removing one's hands from the home row, like VI.

Re:arrow keys?

[Anonymous Coward]

The hjkl thing predates arrow keys on terminal keyboards. In vim and many others, you can use them just fine.

Re:arrow keys?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense. You still have to hit Esc.

Re:arrow keys?

[Anonynnous Coward]

Nonsense. Ctrl-[.

Kwtf

[Anonymous Coward]

dude, why do these guys need to redefine every thing?

how about "kls" or "kcp" or "kmv"??????

"just add a k in front of every thing and let the KDE guys take control of the world, because we are the best and the rest are a bunch or retarded fuckwards"

Really useful.

[muffin_utility]

Seriously, wouldn't there be other targets for hungry coders to attack ? It is quite difficult to see why this should be a priority for anyone. Don't we already have a terminal ? For what do you seriously need a special version of vi editor then ? Gimme a break. No wonder I no longer use Gnome or KDE as priorities are getting upside down in that world. Of course when compared to mine, that is.

Re:Google Cache: screenshots!

[Mana Mana]

Bah! I wanted to see the effing screenshots, so try this cached URL for them!

KVim? Parrot?

[Paul Komarek]

Does this remind anyone else of the Parrot (Python + Perl) joke? In particular, the joke sample code they produced?

Quoting from the joke:
# copy stdin to stdout, except for lines starting with #
while left_angle_right_angle:
if dollar_underscore[0] =eq= "#":
continue_next;
}

-Paul Komarek
print dollar_underscore;

Interesting Use for Embedded Kvim

[cjsnell]

I read about the embedding in Konqueror but couldn't get specifics because of the slashdotting. Here is an idea that I have for a potential use of kvim:

I use SquirrelMail, a web-based IMAP client, to read and send mail. It would be super cool to be able to use kvim in place of the usual browser-provided TEXTAREA editor when I send mail. This would also work well here on slashdot, for editing comments like I'm doing now.

Chris

Re:The reasons KDE sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

You have been trolled!

vim + konsole is a match made in heaven

[edyu]

I personally think vim + konsole is better than gvim or kvim. Although vim already has split (horizontal and verticle), multiple buffers, and escape to shell, sometimes, its nice to be able to open another shell or do something on the command line. Konsole enables me to do so much more. I can vim one file and then open anothe shell from console to run the program and then go back to fix the problem. Having buttons on kvim is not that useful since most of vim users use only keyboards anyway. For people who works strictly without X, use "screen" will also work. If you are like me who dislikes overlapping windows, using the window manager ion makes the workspace even more convenient from keyboards.

Names

[Anonymous Coward]

Gail Ginny Ginger Gwen Georgette Gabrielle Gaye Genevieve Grace Gretchen Greta Giselle Glenda Gladys Geri Gigi Gloria and Guinevere.

they should embed KDE in emacs

[Anonymous Coward]

the other way round would just bloat KDE :-)

Does this mean OS X will finally have a GUI Vim?

[Are We Afraid]

Trolltech porting Qt to OS X made headines a few months ago. Does this port of gVim to Qt mean that us OS X users will finally have the option of running a GUI Vim?

That would be nice. :-)

A dream come true!

[Shade, The]

Yayayayayayayaaaaaay! :))

What's the point?

[DaCool42]

Why do you need to do this at all? What's wrong with gvim as it is?

In a word, syntax highlighting.

[ebyrob]

True, some command prompts support this, but life without it really sucks.

(Okay, maybe two words.)

Mod Parent up.

[ebyrob]

If it was really a Troll... there wouldn't be so many good responses. Just cause you don't agree don't make it a troll.

Configuring gvim to auto-complete on windows as well as say JBuilder is something I haven't been able to pull off. Thanks for bringing the point up Otis!

Of course JBuilder, with some of the smartest features I've seen(like drag and drop visual editors you can use on hand written and modified code), really sucks for manipulating text. You can't even search backwards properly. Yes there's a vi plugin for JBuilder, but it doesn't fill those gaps. Other "smart" editors and environments always seem to suffer similar weaknesses.

In practice, I wind up using two editors just for Java coding. gVim when I know what I'm doing and JBuilder when I really need to get in and read/understand a ton of code before making changes.

Re:funny... the C-X C-x makes a lot of sense...

[BillShatner]

GAY/Emacs is the work of Satan. There can be only one text editor, and that will be Notepad. As soon as that's ported to *nix, I will continue using a functional OS*.

*functional OS, in layman's terms, is an OS that allows you to do work without having a PhD in computer zealotry and/or 3 years to kill searching man-gina pages for the command line options to a stupid program and/or an asshole big enough to drive a truck through because since you spend all your time hitting C-x :w ZZ C-M-f-u-c-k, it's much easier to just have sex with a man.

Oh yeah, this has nothing to do with tech stocks dragging down PriceLine, so don't even go there.

Google Cache of the Web Page

[Anonymous Coward]

http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:j5qav0C4GC0C: www.freehackers.org/kvim/screenshots.html+&hl=en I think these are slashdot proof. ;)

Vim?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, I still prefer nvi. It's the default 'vi' on a lot of systems (*BSD, MacOS X, some Linux distros), I'm used to its multi-buffer commands (which are totally different from Vim). The only thing I'd like that isn't there is Lisp indentation, I just don't miss it enough to implement it...

Re:Flamewar attempt

[x0n]

OT, yes, but:

Writing a Haiku
In seventeen syllables
Is very easy.

Man, I can't believe

[Anonymous Coward]

the /. editors are now themselves trolling.

err . . .

[hawk]

If you use that many equations, you *should* be using lyx. Current versions compile without modification on windows (though I've never had a reason to do that).

It's equation editing doesn't merely trounce equation editor, but blows away the old typesetting commands in v1-5.1 of the macintosh versions of word--by enough that shortly after I met it, I dumped my macs and bought a *nix box as a starving graduate student.

People who write lots of equations *need* LyX. Badly. Never be forced to mouse your way around an equatoin again (though you can when you need to).

hawk, more suited to LaTeX, but using enough equations that he sticks with LyX

Score -1, Troll

[Vulture_]

Rob Malda is trolling in the damn stories again. This time trying to start an editor war.

No doubt, go Vim

[lems1]

For those who did not know, Vim is the best. Go vim go vim go! :-D