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Vim 6.3 Released

Posted by timothy on from the cursory-inspection dept.

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!"

10 of 53 comments (clear)

  1. congrats to Bram by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!

  2. finally! by Enrico+Pulatzo · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:finally! by Enrico+Pulatzo · · Score: 4, Informative

      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)

    2. Re:finally! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

  3. Just for the balance by ciaran_o_riordan · · Score: 3, Interesting

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

    --
    Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
    1. Re:Just for the balance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Just for the balance by ciaran_o_riordan · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
  4. It Must Be My Warped Mind... by Steinfiend · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Happy Vimming!"

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

  5. [2004-06-08] by vijaya_chandra · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  6. Re:A Haretic's Confession by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative
    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.