Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
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
PGP KeyId: 0x08D63965
I kinda thought it was a tongue in cheek joke... no need to get your shorts in a bunch.
sic transit gloria mundi
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.
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!
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.
Maybe Bill Gates, with his vi background, will consider using KDE in windows 2004... :)
-- No sig today
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.
--
I refuse to use
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
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?
Don't quote me on this.
Well it looks like we Slashdotted it already.
....karma whore :0p
As usual you can view using the trusty Google cache by clicking here.
Yeah I know I know
Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?
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.
sic transit gloria mundi
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
: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-)
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.
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
First off, let me say that I actually use Emacs so I'm not (totally) just flaming.
/. 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 :)
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
This post has been brought to you by the Letter K and the letter V, and the number 3.
Code softly but carry a big magnet.
Does Vim support '%' on #if/#else/#endif yet? That's one of the things that stops me from switching from Elvis.
Every bloody emperor has his hand up history's skirt [Peter Hammill/VdGG]
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.
I don't want to have to put up with people saying (GNU|X)/(K|G)/Emacs! :)
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?
--
Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
BTW:
;-)
Writing a Haiku
In seventeen syllables
Is not very hard
Every bloody emperor has his hand up history's skirt [Peter Hammill/VdGG]
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.
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
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!"
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
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.
Ascii artist &
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
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
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
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Easy to use Vim? Don't you mean Cream?
</shameless plug>There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
Nope, I use both. I use vim too, but only for editing remotely or small config files. Writing code in vim is a pain.
http://www.darryl.com/vi.shtml
There's a similar project for GNOME, called Gnome-vim (screenshot). AFAIK, it is only useable with Evolution.
Finally a good reason to try KDE.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
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.
bah. start over
"the power of VIM with KDE's friendliness"
What do you get then? Something that is almost user friendly?
> You've gotta sin to get saved.
User-friendly VIM! I can't wait! Nothing sounds kludgely like a mouseless text editor with mouse support!
*sigh*
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.
In vim hit the keyboard key "insert", it switches between overwrite and insert.
--
Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
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.
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.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Now how long until we get KDE for Emacs?
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.
My journal has hot
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
:wq
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.
http://saveie6.com/
HTH
XML causes global warming.
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.
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.
.
Have you compiled your kernel today??
/.ed already.... Looks like they should have been using IIS.
Silly rabbits never learn...
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.
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
... hi bingo
I thought EOF was C-d. Maybe I'm wrong; can someone explain the difference?
Vim for KDE, does this mean someone will port Vigor to KDE? KVigor?
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
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
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'll give you that Intellij IDEA is a pretty cool piece of software, among Emacs and Eclipse in my favorites list.
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.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
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?).
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!
- undoware.ca
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.
>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.
> 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)).
rant
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.
Bah! People who like vim are weird ;-)
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
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;
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
True, some command prompts support this, but life without it really sucks.
(Okay, maybe two words.)
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.
As well, one can compile with perl and/or python options. Like unto lisp for emacs...
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
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.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe