Vim 6.3 Released

file cabinet (Bram Moolenaar) writes "It has been a year since version 6.2. During that year many bugs were fixed and a few new features added. The support for multiple languages has been improved. It is now possible to use translated help files. A lot of testing has been done and all reported problems have been solved. This is the most stable Vim release ever! Release notes can be found in the announcement. Or do ":help version-6.3" after installing. Happy Vimming!"

Comments

congrats to Bram

[Anonymous Coward]

Vim is great. I used to use Emacs and vi equally: Emacs for programming and other important stuff, vi for editing config files. Then I discovered Vim, and have not used Emacs in a LONG time.

The only thing I didn't like about Vim is the odd (to me) language you extend it with. But I just discovered you can use Ruby, Perl, etc., instead, so once I figure that out I bet I can get uninstall Emacs completely.

And now I see on the site that Bram is accepting sponsorships.. considering how many $$ I make using Vim to do my work, I will gladly send him a few (hundred) euros for his trouble!

finally!

[Enrico Pulatzo]

I installed this last week and was quite happy to see that the p-bug in windows is now fixed! Basically, if you had text selected and started to type a letter p, a paste would ensue rather than typing the letter p.

Re:finally!

[Soul-Burn666]

And why shouldn't it paste?
If you have text selected, you are in visual mode, not insert mode. I don't know if it should paste or not (tho that seems most reasonable), but just inserting the letter p into the text? What makes the letter p special, and not for example the letter "y" (to yank to selected text, one the obvious things you want to do with selected text).

Either that or I completly don't understand what you mean by "started to type the letter p", I assume you meant pressing the p button.

Re:finally!

[Enrico Pulatzo]

In most GUIs, when you select text using a mouse or the keyboard, it puts you in some kind of "type over" mode. ViM now seems to respect this behavior rather than doing it's own thing of allowing commands to be executed. I am unsure whether or not it is a Windows-specific behavioral change or an across-the-board one, but what it boils down to is that ViM on Windows behaves more like a Windows app for this very common and quite expected way.

Re:finally!

[Soul-Burn666]

I very much hope this only applies to the "easy mode" of vim, cuz it would really be annoying after i've got so used to it. Cuz, how exactly am I ever supposed to select text, without pressing the buttons?! ctrl-v jjjjj y
If it started writing j instead of going down... I guess i'll have to stick to old vers or something.

Re:finally!

[Enrico Pulatzo]

I'm certain it's something that can be manipulated via the vimrc file. I'll even wager that the change is in the mswin.vim file that is sourced by default installs on Windows. That's what this thread leads me to believe. (See March 27, 2004 21:57 comment)

Re:finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's across-the-board. The special mode that Vim goes into upon mouse selection is called "Select mode", indicated by "-- SELECT --" and is documented in the Vim manual accessible via :help.

It is a distinct mode to the other Vim modes. It is close to, but different to vim's "Visual mode" entered with "v", used for selecting blocks of text.

(And confusingly, the name "Visual mode" is used in the original Vi for what Vim calls "Normal mode": Vi has no Vim Visual Mode!)

So the windows "p" behaviour was a bug.

Re:finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the original parent was referring to Select mode, which is slightly different from Visual mode. Visual highlighting still works the same.

Re:finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

Vim retains "Visual mode" (ctrl-v) but there is now ALSO a distinct "Select mode" for mouse selections. So you don't need to relearn anything, but mouse selections will now work better. See my other post, and the Vim manual.

Re:finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

doing it's own thing

"its".
No apostrophe.

Just for the balance

[ciaran_o_riordan]

I had the opposite experience. Two years later I'm still finding new functionality in GNU Emacs.

Re:Just for the balance

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time I've tried to force myself to use Emacs on a regular basis I go running back to Vim. It is Emacs non-sensical (too me at least) default key bindings that turn me off. I'm can handle ctrl-v to page down but ESC/meta-v to page up?!?!? Similarly, I don't want to have to remove my hand from the home row in order to hit PageUp/PageDown/Arrows to move about my buffer either.

Viper mode doesn't help either because I'll never end up using any of Emacs more advanced features.

Re:Just for the balance

[ciaran_o_riordan]

Learning new things does take a certain amount of effort. Emacs drove me mad for two whole days as I didn't know how to perform even basic tasks, but it was worth the effort though. (an additional two weeks was required to become properly comfortable).

notepad -> ViM -> Emacs.

I clung to ViM longer than I should have because I had learned it and I didn't want to discard that knowledge. I suspect many people are the same. Learning ViM (all those years ago) was such a pain, who'd want to throw out that effort? Do it. Emacs is much more useful.

Typing Alt-v isn't such a big deal. Emacs has almost 30 years of development put into it, it's a great editor.

Re:Just for the balance

[metamatic]

I switched from emacs to vi, then to vim, and I've never looked back. Vim is much more ergonomic and easier to master than emacs.

Re:Just for the balance

[Anonymous Coward]

Emacs may be more expressive and come with a lot more baggage, but I fail to see how any of that is "much more useful" than the modern features and capabilities matched by Vim. Maybe you never learned those features.

Not "vi", not "Vi", and not "ViM", but Vim. The editor.

So here's my theory (one I see a lot of): You learned Vim on your own, hacking config files and the like. But you only mastered only the basic things picked up mostly by accident or from some really bad web tutorial. But then you got a new job in an all-Emacs house, where everyone's been cutting code in Emacs for decades (even some Elisp code for special company things, like source checkouts and diffs), and for two weeks they indoctrinate you about all the fancy whiz-bang features in Emacs that aren't in "/bin/vi" (as opposed to /usr/local/bin/vim, or wherever), and they go on to malign "/bin/vi" and you pick it up too, all the while remaining ignorant to the true power of the greatest editor ever. Years later you end up on slashdot posting misguided and wrong propaganda, as you spread the mistaken notion that Emacs is somehow "much more useful" than "ViM".

You're a tool of the vast Emacs conspiracy. One day, a truly gifted hacker fluent in Vim will destroy you and your kind.

Make your time.

Re:Just for the balance

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a tool of the vast Emacs conspiracy. One day, a truly gifted hacker fluent in Vim will destroy you and your kind.

Now this, this is why I read /.

Re:Just for the balance

[Feztaa]

I think the secret to using emacs comfortably is to map your right alt key (admit it, you've never touched that key in all your life) to be the left control key.

Now I scroll through documents by simply holding down my right alt key and pressing 'n', which is interpreted by Emacs as C-n, which puts you onto the next line of text. C-n is actually very easy to just hold down when it's your right alt key (assuming qwerty layout).

I think it's actually kinda funny with vim using hjkl for movement and emacs using fbnp. f, b, n, and p are MUCH more logical (F for going Forward one character, B for Backward, N for Next line, P for Previous line), it's just that those keys happen to be scattered around the keyboard. Vim just picked wacky letters that have nothing to do with anything, except that they're right next to each other.

I'm actually getting used to Emacs. At first I thought it was inefficient to have to press C-x C-s to save a file, then I realized that it was less keypresses than ESC :wq!. Same with C-x C-c to exit, etc. The pain of holding down two keys at once is easily compensated for by not having to switch modes. Modes in vim always screwed me up; even though I was used to vim commands after years of use, I still found myself trying to type text into command mode or typing commands into insert mode. My brain has been so damaged by vim's modes that you'll often see me typing vim commands into Emacs, it's really embarrassing. "Ok, I want to edit this, press i, oops, delete the i and type what I really wanted..."

Re:Just for the balance

[Anonymous Coward]

At first I thought it was inefficient to have to press C-x C-s to save a file, then I realized that it was less keypresses than ESC :wq!. Same with C-x C-c to exit, etc.

And C-s is less keypresses than C-x C-s, and M-F4 is less keypresses than C-x C-c. Notepad beats all comers!

Re:Just for the balance

[phaze3000]

I'm actually getting used to Emacs. At first I thought it was inefficient to have to press C-x C-s to save a file, then I realized that it was less keypresses than ESC :wq!.

Use :x then.. :)

Re:Just for the balance

[hymie3]

At first I thought it was inefficient to have to press C-x C-s to save a file, then I realized that it was less keypresses than ESC :wq!.

Well, you're more than welcome to map C-x C-s (in any mode) to be ":wq!". Or you chould type "Shift-Z Shift-Z", if doing keymapping is too troublesome.

Personally, I like that it's more than three keystrokes to save. Having to type "ESC :wq (or :q!)" (especially the last two) requires more thought (do I *really* want to save/exit this document?) than C-x C-c. I guess it's just what you're used to.

Re:Just for the balance

[Tarpan]

I think the secret to using emacs comfortably is to map your right alt key (admit it, you've never touched that key in all your life) to be the left control key.

Ehh, maybe for you with us layout. I use it all the time (swedish layout) as some, albeit not so commonly used chars are bound to it. Most used are probably @ (right alt-2) and $ (right alt-3). I got those bound to capslock ($ without shift and @ with shift) as it's just a pain in the **s to code perl without it.. but they are used.

And just for the record, I love vim and couldn't live with out!

Re:Just for the balance

[Just Some Guy]

OT: For all the "get a compliant browser" stuff at the bottom of that page, it doesn't validate. Just thought you ought to know.

Re:Just for the balance

[ciaran_o_riordan]

A missing . Fixed now, thanks.

Re:Just for the balance

[netsharc]

Notepad95 (98/NT too?) didn't even understand the Ctrl-S shortcut! I use metapad", it's cool! Replacing notepad.exe with it is quite a hack though, you have to have the speed to outwit the System File Protection. :)

Re:Just for the balance

[koogydelbbog]

> Vim just picked wacky letters that have nothing to do with anything, except that they're right next to each other.

when vi was first written lots of keyboards didn't have cursor keys but did have arrows on the hjkl keys (ctrl-h is backspace for instance, ctrl-j is linefeed) so it seemed logical to use those. l for forward one *l*etter also ties in nicely with vi's other action/movement commands: dw = delete word, d5l = delete 5 letters.

> emacs using fbnp. f, b, n, and p are MUCH more logical

in vim:
ctrl-f = forward a page
ctrl-b = back a page
ctrl-n = next line
ctrl-p = previous line

Re:Just for the balance

[nicolas.e]

ZZ
only two keystrokes.

Re:Just for the balance

[phaze3000]

Nice one..

I reckon you could probably learn a vim command a day for the rest of your life and still not know them all..

It Must Be My Warped Mind...

[Steinfiend]

"Happy Vimming!"

Am I the only one who thinks this sounds insanely dirty?!

Re:It Must Be My Warped Mind...

[sean23007]

Um, yes.

Oh no!

[cbcbcb]

More crap subverting the beauty that was vim 5.8. I hate the way the latest versions of vim require all sorts of weird vimrc magic just to stop files coming out in unreadable multicolor, with broken magic auto-indent. Vim 6 is almost as bad as MS Word for generally getting in my way. Vim crashes less though...

Re:Oh no!

[Anonymous Coward]

> (Score:1, Troll)

Oh dear, some vim-happy moderator's got his panties in a knot. GEEZ, people, it's an opinion, not a troll.

Re:Oh no!

[magefile]

If you don't like it, don't upgrade. You're not locked in to one version of text files like you would be locked into a specific version of .doc files with Word.

<sarcasm>Or you could always write a patch; you have the source code.</sarcasm>

[2004-06-08]

[vijaya_chandra]

It has been a year since version 6.2.
It has been almost 2 weeks since 6.3 was released and we get an entry in Announcements on /. now :)

vim, for the quick editor it is, doesn't deserve this delay.

If you check the wishlist for 7.0 you would be surprised to observe that support for embedding vim in another gui program is right up in the top slots with *none* voting against it.

It's good to see people actually agreeing upon something good

Did you know that 'vim' is a household name in India and its sales amount to more than Rs. 2500 millions!?! That vim here is a dishwashing bar to help ppl get away from "KitchenSink" faster is a different matter.

Re:[2004-06-08]

[CAPSLOCK2000]

VIM is also the Dutch name of a cleaning product in The Netherlands, where Vim author Bram Moolenaar resides. It's probably the same company as the indian stuff, so this name match might not be completly accidental.

Re:[2004-06-08]

[pabtro]

Yes, in Chile, Vim is a thick clear greenish liquid use to do your dishwashing, like Palm Olive here in North America. Maybe this is a related P&G stuff.

Re:[2004-06-08]

[HorsePunchKid]

Did you know that 'vim' is a household name in India and its sales amount to...

Of course, vim is also just a plain old english word, though sadly it's not used much anymore. About the only time you ever hear it is in the phrase "vim and vigor", which doesn't come up that often.

I personally think "vim" is a great name for the editor, whether it was intended to be a play on the word or not. It's always fun in that aloof sort of way when somebody's looking over my shoulder as I code, marvelling at how quickly I jump around files editing things. I use Vim with a great deal of vim!

And the Ruby VIM syntax/indent files...

[tcopeland]

...are available here.

To close, let me just say this.... :wq.

Re:Big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sorry. I truly am...

Vim or Emacs

[ufnoise]

A few years ago, 1999. I had the choice of learning emacs or vim. Unfortunately, the computers I had made emacs seem slow and cumbersome, whereas gvim and vim felt much faster. Now I have a faster computer which makes the latency between the two softwares feel about the same. Unfortunately, I love vim too much to let it go and about the only thing I know in emacs is control-c control-x.

I come from the school of thought that a piece of software should do one thing well, and vim fit the bill. It let me edit programs fast. When I was dialing up over modem, vim seemed fast. In recent years I was somewhat annoyed by the incremental search with automatic highlighting being on by default, but I feel overall that my experience with vim has been an extremely productive one.

Setting up options with vim is very easy, where it seems that you have to carry around a configuration file every where you go to get the emacs you are used to.

Re:Vim or Emacs

[Just Some Guy]

I come from the school of thought that a piece of software should do one thing well

Emacs does exactly one thing: execute elisp code. All the rest is just shine. :)

Re:Vim or Emacs

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe someone will write a good editor with elisp one day.

A Haretic's Confession

[Anonymous Coward]

I must admit that I am addicted to windows-style shortcuts in text editors (shift + arrows to select, ctrl+c to copy, ctrl-v to paste, ctrl + arrows to skip a word, ctrl + shift + arrows to select while skipping, home to go to the beginning of the line (to the first letter after the whitespace at first, then to the beginning of the line), end to go to the end of the line, shift+home to select to the beginning, shift + end to select to the end).

Does someone please know of some module for Vim and/or Emacs that makes use of these shortcuts? I am too retarded to learn the two editing modes of Vim or to learn the Emacs-specific shortcuts, then write an extension module for my "favourite" shortcuts.

That is, because I participated in the writing of a text editor (in fact, we took some public domain component as a basis). Then I started an editor from scratch (in C++), and have many things (an AVL Tree used as a random-access array) for the document, a line structure that uses a linked list of small chunks of chars with a gap in the middle, even a java highlighter. But I do not have the time to work on this (work at the company, the university, etc.). So it would be nice to find some module for Emacs that turns it into something am I already quite familiar with, any help would be appreciated! :) Besides, the world hardly needs Yet Another Text Editor :)

Re:A Haretic's Confession

[Anonymous Coward]

I must admit that I am addicted to windows-style shortcuts in text editors (shift + arrows to select, ctrl+c to copy, ctrl-v to paste, ctrl + arrows to skip a word, ctrl + shift + arrows to select while skipping, home to go to the beginning of the line (to the first letter after the whitespace at first, then to the beginning of the line), end to go to the end of the line, shift+home to select to the beginning, shift + end to select to the end).

Sure, those keybindings are the default when you install Vim on Windows. They're contained in a script called mswin.vim that is automatically run in each session. I'm sure you could even use the keybindings on a *nix box, if you're so inclined.

Oh, just great!

[Feztaa]

I sure picked a great time to switch to Emacs.

Oh well, at least I'm enjoying Emacs ;)

No!! Please don't try that

[vijaya_chandra]

Does someone please know of some module for Vim and/or Emacs that makes use of these shortcuts?

I would sincerely suggest not to look out for such a module. Please try the vim equivalents for a day and you'd never have to run around your hands all over the keyboard. You wouldn't call them shortcuts once you get used to vim.

'v' for visual mode, then just move around with i,j,k,l *in* selection mode without straining your pinky holding the shift button all the while
then 'y' to copy
and anywhere you need to paste 'p'
That would be atleast 100 times good for your fingers than moving your hands to get to the arrow keys while holding the shift key

'e', 'w', 'b', '^', '0' are the other *real* shortcuts

I also dislike multicolor/auto-indent

[Mad Bad Rabbit]

I have been using vi for almost 20 years, and I also /strongly/ dislike vim's multicolor and auto-indent
features.

My preferred visual setup is white text on black bg.
If I try to use vim to edit .c or .cpp programs, the
comments appear in almost-unreadable dark blue; and
all the string and numeric literals are deep dark red.

And the cindent mode is downright infuriating to me.
Bad editor! Leave text alone! /ME/ decide how indent!!

Why don't I fix these by setting nocindent, etc. in my
$HOME/.vimrc ? Because I already tried, and it won't
let me ; the /usr/share/vim/vim61/macros/vimrc settings
(which I don't have authority to edit on most of our
shared and frequently reinstalled machines) /override/
my .vimrc!! Why the hell don't the end-user's desired
settings take precedence over some shared default file?!
Arrrgh!

Until/unless this changes in some future version, vim is
near-useless to me (despite its nifty-looking features),
and I must resort to a stashed copy of 'old' vi.

Re:I also dislike multicolor/auto-indent

[cbcbcb]

I use the following:
set noautoindent
set nocindent
filetype plugin indent off
set noai

It appears that I need to disable auto indenting 4 times, and the syntax colouring disappears with it.

Re:I also dislike multicolor/auto-indent

[bzipitidoo]

:set background=dark
:colorscheme evening

I also like black backgrounds. Since the rest of the world seems to like white backgrounds and so everything defaults to that, had to spend a bit of time reading the docs to find whether something could be done about vim's settings. If they assumed black bg, then I could blissfully remain ignorant of those features (because I'd rather spend time hacking on code, not fiddling with the tools I need to hack on code), just like all those people who prefer white bg can now.

Multicolor text is great! Have loved it ever since I first saw it in Borland's Turbo Pascal 7, more than 10 years ago. I am guessing it's not syntax highlighting that bugs you, it's the default color scheme.

Re:I also dislike multicolor/auto-indent

[Mad Bad Rabbit]

:set background=dark
:colorscheme evening

Cool, thanks! Now if I could just find a way to turn off autoindent as well.
I've tried all the following in my .vimrc, but they don't work:

set noautoindent
set nocindent
set noai

Re:I also dislike multicolor/auto-indent

[Anonymous Coward]

Try some of the suggestions on this page. It appears that some of the filetype plugins are overriding your settings.

Re:I also dislike multicolor/auto-indent

[Mad Bad Rabbit]

Try some of the suggestions on this page. It appears that some of the filetype plugins are overriding your settings.

O thank you anonymous coward! By adding this to $HOME/.vimrc:

autocmd FileType * set fo-=r fo-=o nocindent noautoindent

I can finally disable autoindent, and use vim the way I want to. Thanks again!

that should have been:

[ciaran_o_riordan]

A missing

</a>