Vim 6.4 Released

file cabinet writes to tell us that for the first time in more than a year Vim has released a new version. Version 6.4 stable was released yesterday and while there are no new features added they are touting dozens of bug fixes.

Comments

Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[(1 -sqrt(5))*(2**-1)]

"Because we use vi , son; they use emacs."

In good sadness, though, I'm looking forward to the spell-checking in Vim 7.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Anonymous Coward]

yep, it's quite unfortunate that we still have discrimination due to the editor that one uses.

People are being taken from their homes and put in concentration camps, just because they use vim. Never heard of this you say? it's happening all over europe. The evil facist GNU are rounding them up in an attempt to rid the world of vim blood to wipe out the next generation.

I say screw them, stick up for your beliefs, and spread the words: 'vive la vim'

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[LnxAddct]

The vimspell script works well.
Regards,
Steve

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[falzer]

VIM is *not* user friendly, and until it is VIM will stay with <= 1% marketshare.

Take editing text. Vim zealots are now saying "oh editing text is so easy, just use the hjkl keys to move around and use ":%s/apple/apricot/gi" to do a search and replace. Yes, because typing in "5kck}" is so much more intuitive than simply moving the cursor, selecting two lines of text with the mouse, then hitting the } key.

VIM zealots are far too forgiving when judging the difficultly of VIM interface issues and far too harsh when judging the difficulty of Notepad issues. Example comments:

User: "How do I fucking edit this goddamn text file!? Why does Linux only come with vi installed?"
Zealot: "Oh that's easy! Just go vim <the file you want to edit>. No no, wait, don't type anything yet. It won't work the sa-- ok hit escape, ok, hit u a few times, ok you're back to where you started. Now vi works a little differently than most text editors: there is command mode and edit mode. Vim starts in command mode where you issue commands (such as hjkl) to move the cursor around, d followed by a movement command to delete lines of text, or i (for example) to insert text. Pretty much almost every letter of the alphabet (upper and lower case) is a command. When you go into a text editing mode by issuing the appropriate command, you type your text like normal then hit escape to back out. You type :q to quit, or ZZ / :wq to save and quit. Sometimes you need to put in a ! after a : command to force it. Quite elegant, don't you think?"

User: "How do I edit text files using notepad?"
Zealot: "Oh God, you have to use the graphical luser interface to open a text file. Then use the arrow keys (or optionally mouse) to position the cursor where you want to type. Now you've gotta actually enter in the text using the keyboard! Careful though, it might break, it just blithely assumes that what you're typing is text and not commands!"

So, I guess the point I'm trying to make is that what seems easy and natural to VIM geeks is definitely not what regular people consider easy and natural. Hence, the preference towards notepad.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Demerol]

No one says vim is user friendly. It's not supposed to be. It's supposed to be powerful, and it is. It's hard to learn and it probably always will stay with 1% of the market share but I don't think the developers really care for increasing market share. Remember...it's free in every sense.

And in reply to the troll before you:

vim does have mouse support (:set mouse=a) in both terminal and, obviously, gui modes.

Also, :set wrap will solve your other qualm.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Moloch666]

Hm, for some reason notepad doesn't work from ssh. With commands like cl, cw and so on. VIM makes the perfect editor for quick edits on a remote computer.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[spuzzzzzzz]

Sadly, my two sibling responses seem to have missed the joke. And congratulations on fixing the > 1% thing, too...

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[hawkbug]

So what's wrong with pico or joe? Both very easy to use in my opinion, much more so than VI.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Alan]

Nothing is wrong with those, however generally speaking, they aren't installed by default on a unix box, while vi/vim/elvis or some other vi-type editor is installed on pretty much 100% of every unix box I've been on, from linux to solaris to *bsd to hpux. Personally I love vi, however I understand it's not for everyone.

Everyone who works with unix should learn how to use vi though, for the simple reason that it's on pretty much every unix box out there, and is the editor you're pretty much guarenteed to be able to have available if $random_person asks you to quick jump on their $unix_box to [do something].

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[hereticmessiah]

Have you read Neal Stevenson's "In the Beginning Was the Command Line"? If you had, you wouldn't be spouting this nonsense.

Seriously, go read this section: http://tinyurl.com/9qukb

In it, he compares two devices: a heavy duty industrial drill called the Hole Hawg, and your basic power drill. Both do the same thing--drill holes--but their intent is different. The Hole Hawg is designed to drill through anything, whereas the regular power drill is designed for household use. The power drill lacks the power of the Hole Hawg, but has safety features that the Hole Hawg can't afford to have because of this. Whereas the Hole Hawg will keep spinning if it hits something hard (and therefore requires a large amount of strength to keep steady), whereas the power drill will slow down if it encounters too much resistance.

Similarly, Vim is the Hole Hawg of text editors, whereas notepad is a regular powerdrill. Both have different intentions, with the former being designed for heavy-duty text editing as a programmer or highly technical user would need, and the latter designed for occasional light editing, the kind most non-technical users do. The intent is different and so the interfaces differ.

It's very, very difficult to create a deep, powerful interface that is easily discoverable. At best, you can make it as learnable as possible. This is what Vim attempts to do. Notepad goes for a shallow, easily discoverable interface at the expense of power.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Billly Gates]

With me, I am waiting for the upgrade that will add obscure unlogical keystrokes mixed with a ton of mediocre packages that do everything unix can do but require strange meta key combo's to access.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Billly Gates]

Yes I was trying to be funny with the other comment but there is a difference in philisophy between emacs and vi.

Korn, the developer of the korn shell was asked by a slashdoter if he prefered vi or emacs. His response was he wanted a great editor that just edits text, but has the ability to use the external unix commands and shell scripting for the complex things.

There is a debate if people who prefer emacs get used to the emacs interface rather than unix, due to the differences between reflexes. I think this is why so many users love emacs of loathe it.

I like unix and doing a :w :sh :q and :make to anyfile in vi with quick editing.

My point is spellchecking should be done on the command line or with the spell script. It was difficult to learn unix as it is and emacs is whole different system based on some lisp os. (at least thats how it feels to me)

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Vintermann]

I disagree that everyone should learn to use vi. It's not a cost-effective investement in my opinion (nor is emacs, although there are some modes that might have changed my mind if I was heavily into the things they deal with). You spend months typing like a turtle. By the time you actually get up to a reasonable speed, you have used so many seconds, minutes and hours that you'd need some truly impressive productivity gains to make it worth it.

The folks at Xerox PARC actually experimented with this. They found out that the basic, mouse-based text editor saved very much in training costs, while actually being as fast as or faster than the traditional editors.

If some random person asks me to edit a text file on his unix box, I install some tiny text editor for him (the editor in midnight commander works fine for me). If he won't/can't let me, or the unix version is so uttely weird that I can't figure out how to install it, I say "let's sign a support contract, then we can talk about it".

That said, for you who have already invested a couple of months of your lives learning the arcana of vi (and on this thread, I suspect there might be some ;-), it's not really worth it to switch to a post-PARC editor. Not if you're already up to speed. While skills in regular modern text editors are useful because they are transferable, they are quick to learn anyway, that's what's nice about them.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Afrosheen]

The thing wrong with pico is it isn't free, hence why distros like Centos and Whitebox include its free clone, nano. http://www.asty.org/articles/20010702pine.html has a decent article detailing pine's default text editor, pico's licensing scheme and why it's bad, and goes on to explain why nano is a suitable replacement.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Vimacs

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[aichpvee]

Because vi has Real Ultimate Power! It's the super ninja of text editors. If you don't believe me you better get a life right away because I feel it in my terminal emulator.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[clymere]

Its worth learning to at least get by in Vi, because it is _always_ there on a *nix box.

I first forced myself to learn its commands after doing a very slim Solaris 8 install and having network problems. The ONLY text editor there was Vi, and if i wanted to edit some config files and get the network up so I could install something else, I was going to need to use Vi to do it ;)

Even if you prefer to use something else, it is very wise to learn at least the basic Vi commands, or else you risk getting yourself into a bind like mine...or even worse, doing it in front of a client who looks at you very strangely when you tell them you're capable of working on their UNIX servers...but never bothered to learn Vi.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[oever]

What is the point of :sh if you have ^z?

Use ^z to put vi in the background and type 'fg' in the shell to get back.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[p2sam]

I'd disagree with you about the user friendlyness of vim. I think Vim is one of the most user friendly editors out there. It's highly ergonomic, and easy to use. BUT!! It is not easy to learn.

That's right. Easy to use, and Easy to learn are two different things. Easy to use means that one can accomplish a task with minimal effort. Easy to learn means just that, easy to learn. The two are not necessary mutually exclusive, but I have yet to see a text editor that has both.

Modern UI designers have fallen into the tar pit of designing ONLY for new users, so that tasks can be performed easily by new users, but becomes difficult to use for the power user. In that sense, most modern IDE's are easy to learn, but hard to use.

In my opinion, I'd rather spend a few days learning to use a tool that will increase my long term productivity.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[DarkIye]

Personally, I found both Emacs and ViM unhelpful. They had a lot of 'features' and 'shortcuts' - and frankly, I have better things to do with my time (such writing code and other such activities) than to spend God knows how long to add myself to the 1% bracket using ViM (according to whatsisname back there). That's why I just stuck to the default text editor (which happened to be gedit, since my first Linux experience was Fedora avec Gnome), which automatically picked up on which language I was coding in and highlighted variables, functions and so on, and didn't ask for a lot of screwing around with the minibuffer when I tried to mess with the text colour or background. So basically, I'd rather be doing something else than argue or read endless docs and tutorials.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[p2sam]

For a programmer, who spends 7.5 hours a work day using a text editor, it's probably worth it to use the most effective editor, even if it takes a couple of months to get to speed on the tool. (Note: most people learn enough vi to get by in a couple of days.)

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[ChrisGilliard]

Hey, at least vi is better than ed. If you haven't tried it, type 'ed at your terminal and you'll see what I mean.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[trewornan]

It's highly ergonomic, and easy to use

I tend to use vi more than other editors but the one thing that really bugs me is having to move my hands to reach the Esc key all the time. Does anybody here know of an alternative? Some combination with Alt or Ctrl maybe?

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[mtdnelson]

While skills in regular modern text editors are useful because they are transferable, they are quick to learn anyway, that's what's nice about them.

My comment is slightly off-topic, but seems kinda relevant to the above post... I am told that there used to be a woman called Trudi Berger (my spelling may be incorrect...) at York University. She specialised in crash language courses - she could get complete beginners to pass GCSE exams with flying colours in less than a week, by complete immersion in the subject. She was fluent in many languages. However, she never learned 'Esperanto'. She always said "They say that you can learn Esperanto in a week. So, when everyone else speaks it, I'll only be a week behind!"

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Vintermann]

Is vi the most effective editor? I doubt it. By so much that you can actually win back the time you spent learning? I strongly doubt it. Remember, we're talking tenths of a second here.

Most people indeed learn enough of vi in a couple of days so that they at least don't need a cheat sheet anymore, but they type like turtles. I will go that far one day, if I really have to :-)

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[mforbes]

I have the best solution for this one, but YMMV: really big hands.

In all seriousness, being able to stretch 12 white keys on a full-size piano keyboard does in come in useful sometimes...

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Anonymous Coward]

just outsource the task

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[akaempf]

Ctrl [ acts as escape. Vim also lets you reprogram other key combinations to act as escape, e.g., Ctrl Space.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[tomjen]

Hehe, i do not use vi - if emacs is not installed i will use ed as i also like this editor. If neither is installed then they can fuck off (or install ed - its not like it is a big drain on disk space)

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[ashot]

ctrl-[ is analternative. I have capslock mapped to control so that makes it easier... I also have tab mapped to the escape (in vim), which makes it even easier =]

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[knipknap]

You spend months typing like a turtle.

Actually, in about one month you should be able to gain reasonable speed. I recently switched from a mouse-based editor (Anjuta) to vim and wrote a short review when I reached the break even.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Between * to automatically search, bookmarks, the ability to replace several words or letters without having to select them, and ctrl-p/n (tab in my vimrc) to autocomplete words, vim is vastly more effective than traditional editors. I can't stress enough how switching back to editors that use a mouse and keyboard together slows people down. With vim (not mere vi, that sucks too), I keep my hands where I need them to type, it saves me minutes if not an hour every day. And autocomplete minimizes typos speeding up debug time.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Alioth]

Vim *is* a mouse based text editor. You can put a noob in front of vim on a GUI, and they can use it almost like notepad - complete with pull down menus and a scuzzy little toolbar with icons on it.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[grkvlt]

honestly, the best way to get used to the VI keys for moving around a file is to play *nethack* repeatedly! that's how i got myself to type HJKL instinctively for navigation, anyway...

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Crayon Kid]

Everyone who works with unix should learn how to use vi though, for the simple reason that it's on pretty much every unix box out there, and is the editor you're pretty much guarenteed to be able to have available if $random_person asks you to quick jump on their $unix_box to [do something].

The most that "fact" will extort out of me is learning the append and save commands, so I can do some editing if indeed the box only has vi on it.

But it is true that no matter what, you should actually learn the very basics of several of the most often encountered editors. Remember the first time you entered one of these editors (any of them!) and you couldn't get out of it and had to kill the session?

At least some editors (like joe) give you by default a tip about reaching the builtin help system...

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[HerrGoober]

Three words: Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

The less you have to use the mouse the more opportunity you have for better posture at the desk all round.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Budrick]

Sometimes it's nice to capture the output straight into a buffer, which vim can do.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Splab]

Theres a plugin called vispell that does some callback to aspell or ispell - works great for me.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Fledsbo]

Remap the (totally useless) CapsLock key to escape. Voila!

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Fred_A]

I've been using vi editors fo ages for the simple reason that nothing else was available. Well, I wouldn't have used Notepad (I don't think I've ever used notepad) but something with a more modern interface would certainly have been welcome. And if you don't like vi, go play with the system editor on VMS, it's not much better.

The purpose of vim isn't to make a user friendly editor, it's to make a better vi. vi isn't a user friendly editor, it's a horrible relic from another age which however happens to be :
1. Quite powerful
2. available on pretty much any Unix machine
3. therefore well known by most Unix users

When I came upon machines that could run Emacs I usually ran that because I found that it was more comfortable for me, however I just used what was available, so learning vi and Emacs was just what everybody did. You were free to prefer whichever.

However the main advantage of vi over Emacs is that vi (the original) is much more lightweight and can typically be used when the system is slightly broken (having a statically linked vi is always a good idea). I'm not sure that's still true with vim.

I still tend to point out vi to beginning Unix users (the tinkering kind, not the office desktop users) mentioning that for historical reasons (many things on Unix are there for historical reasons), vi is the default editor on most systems and you can usually rely on it being present. So learning a subset of commands (insert, delete, replace, save, quit without saving) is always a good idea.

On a side note, when I installed Gentoo on the machine I'm typing this on, the installation manual said I had to edit a few files. Except there were no editors installed. Or at least no vi. No vim either. No vi*.

It took me a good 15 minutes to figure out that a thing called "nano" (of which I had never heard) was installed by default to be used as an editor while vi was optional. This is a typical braindead decision. Adding a user friendly editor is always good, removing the widely acceptly default editor (quirky as it is) is always bad.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Peter La Casse]

Actually, in about one month you should be able to gain reasonable speed.

My experience was even faster than that. The number of basic commands I needed to learn was very small, and after using vi-like programs for years now, I still have barely scratched the surface. I never did quite get the hang of using hjkl for movement, but that is seldom an issue these days. I'm currently working on using the native cut and paste commands instead of the mouse and menu.

Way back when, vi was the only text editor on a class of systems I needed to work on, and I figured that if I used it for everything I wouldn't need to constantly change my mode of thinking when switching from system to system. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that gvim for windows combined vi semantics with all of the windows editor semantics that I was used to. (My previous text editor was PFE.)

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[ntroncos]

imap jj

put that in your .vimrc file and your problem is solved. No language that i know of has a word with two consecutive j. So this mapping is realy useful, the ESC key in the middle of your keyboard :).

Hence the POWER of vim, you can re-arange thing as you see fit. As it has been said, its a pain to learn but a joy to use.

Life with out regular expresion it's like life without sex.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[J'raxis]

Arrow keys also work just fine for moving around, by default.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Fred_A]

That's what your nose is for.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[J'raxis]

Polish apparently uses jj to transliterate Arabic; see Omar Chajjam. I don't know Polish, but it probably uses it for other things, too, since transliteration generally means bringing foreign words into your language's orthography.

That also ignores the fact that people don't just use editors for typing natural text but for typing code: I'm sure someone's source code contains name tokens with jj in them.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[QuestorTapes]

> ...Vim is the Hole Hawg of text editors, whereas notepad is a
> regular powerdrill. Both have different intentions, with the
> former being designed for heavy-duty text editing as a programmer
> or highly technical user would need, and the latter designed for
> occasional light editing, the kind most non-technical users do.
> The intent is different and so the interfaces differ.

Exactly correct. That's why a lot of people preferred WordStar to Word or WordPerfect. and we still remember the hotkeys for thos editors that do emulation (Borland's Turbo C++ editor, VB classic, tons of programmer's tools )

> It's very, very difficult to create a deep, powerful interface
> that is easily discoverable.

True.

> At best, you can make it as learnable as possible.

Have to disagree; in addition to making it as learnable as possible, you need to make it, as you said, "discoverable". Discoverability is aided not by a shallow interface, but by making experimentation safe. It should be very easy to:

- see underlying patterns in the UI, to consider what -might- be done
- easily distinguish actions which did something from those which do nothing
- undo anything, thus encouraging the user to try new things.
- as modeless as possible, so that actions which do nothing -most- of the
    time do nothing destructive the other times

This is one area where vi is not as good as some tools. Note that this is not an area where most tools are good, and vi is poor. This is an area where most tools are poor, and vi fails to rise significantly above the majority.

> This is what Vim attempts to do. Notepad goes for a shallow, easily
> discoverable interface at the expense of power.

Yes; other tools attempt to increase both power and discoverability, with mixed success.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[ddilling]

You forgot the -X

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[trewornan]

Ctrl space sounds good - how do you remap keys?

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[gnu-user]

..having to move my hands to reach the Esc key all the time. Does anybody here know of an alternative?

Yep!

CNT-[ is escape.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Sir, I must take exception to your post. Notepad is in no way, shape, or form a regular powerdrill! It's more like one of those toy hand cranked drills that excels at drilling through cardboard.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Ocrad]

Similarly, Vim is the Hole Hawg of text editors

Please, could you explain me what Vim can do that Emacs or Moe (the new GNU editor) can't.

I am not trolling. I would like to improve GNU Moe as much as possible.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Hatta]

VIM is *not* user friendly, and until it is VIM will stay with

VIM is just particular about who it considers a friend. Nothing wrong with that.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[nautical9]

For a programmer, who spends 7.5 hours a work day using a text editor, it's probably worth it to use the most effective editor, even if it takes a couple of months to get to speed on the tool. (Note: most people learn enough vi to get by in a couple of days.)

I think you can "get by" in vi more quickly than a couple of days. If vim is installed, type "vimtutor" at the commandline. After 30-60 minutes, you'll have a working understand of how vim (and vi) works, and with a bit more practice the two-mode operation becomes second nature.

But it does takes weeks/months/years of use to really master it. I try to take a few hours per month to visit various VIM tips pages and learn something new.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[cloudmaster]

IMHO, nano is more than a suitable replacement - it's actually a capable editor with a reasonable complete feature set. It also has the coolest product-related web site layout ever. :)

That said, I use vim. The editor that takes a week to learn, and a lifetime to master (word completion - ctrl+n / ctrl+p - and block-mode editing - ctrl+v - are my new features of the month this month)...

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[p2sam]

ah, I can only do 10 white keys. but I never correlated my affinity for using Vim with my piano skillz ... I'd think it's more suitable for Emacs, where you're suppose to do "chords" like M-x-fancy-kung-fu C-f-G. :)

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[blair1q]

The conclusion most will draw from your argument rests on a faulty implication: that vi was intended to be more featureful than Notepad.

If Bill Joy had had access to the screen capabilities of a graphics engine, instead of a glass-TTY, there might never have been a Notepad, because vi would have had a mouse and a cursor and still would have had need to put all of vi's "power" into the editor he chose to write.

Vi isn't as "easy to use" as Notepad because Bill Joy lacked the technology. Notepad isn't as "powerful" as vi because Microsoft lacked the concern.

None of this stopped Richard Stallman, who put everything into emacs. But then, nothing stopped Richard Stallman, who put way too much into emacs, and suggested the problem was that you lacked two extra fingers and an eidetic memory for command strings and an understanding of the obvious need for operating-system internals in a text editor...

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[nazsco]

Programer: How do i program that feature?
falzer: Install MS visual basic, buy that control from companyX and simple drag and drop there.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[zootm]

It's not easy to use. It's efficient to use. In terms of usability, learnability of a system is far more important.

I don't believe that Vim makes one considerably more efficient in the long term, for anything of any real importance. You really want to spend much more time thinking about what you want to type than actually typing it.

This does not mean Vim is a bad editor. I know a lot of people love to use it, and love being so quick with things. That's great, and it probably means that Vim is the editor for those people. But I think that touting it as some kind of fantastic productivity application is misleading, it most certainly is not.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[obdulio]

I have to work over very slow modem connections. Using vi and the set -o vi option in the korn shell help me a lot. Vi was designed to do the maximum work with a minimum amount of keypressing.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, good stuff. I am a native Arabic speaker and interested in machine translation and NLP of Arabic texts.

Al akh 3arabi kaman? wela shu?

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[arose]

And Emacs is the "thermonuclear word processor".

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[valintin]

I think most people in the know, have already remapped the "caps lock" to the Control key.

I swap the mapping of the ESC and `~ keys to bring the ESC key closer.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why I use an ide for programming. Yes I am a vi biggot but do not consider myself an expert.

If you need to know class and function names a nice ide that can show you members and functions for a particular class can save time and help you learn a language.

Yes I like the quick editing for large files but its a tradeoff.

If only eclipse/netbeans supported vi bindings. I know kdevelop supports emacs style bindings but it lacks auto completion and other features.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[AnonymousKev]

I learned vi while taking an "Introduction to C Programming" class sponsored by Cray. The instructor was a short little man named "Kermit" (no, he wasn't green). I'll never forget his introduction to the class:

This will be a good opportunity to learn the vi editor, since it is the only editor available for this class. vi is an editor you will hate passionately for exactly two weeks. After that, you'll wonder how you ever lived without it.

That was back in 1989, and he was 100% correct.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stallman did just what you described.

It's calle emacs.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Anonymous Coward]

vi sucks in dvorak.

I use emacs.

Dvorak is even more ergonomic than vi, because most of your keystrokes are text anyway.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[p2sam]

Then you are simply disagreeing with me that "Easy to use" and "Easy to learn" are two different things.

For the casual user (say only spend 5% of the work day on text editing), Vim is not really appropriate. Because as you have pointed out, the return on efficiency and time saved would not justify the cost of spending time on learning it.

But for a programmer who spends say 95% of the work day on text editing, learning an advanced efficient tool (maybe even Emacs) makes sense.

We also disagree on what usability means. Learnability of an application is highly important for the casual user. But for the power user, learnability is pretty low priority, if the return in efficiency outweights time/effort spent on learning the application.

I just wish to point out that modern UI designers have an unfair bias towards tailoring for the casual user, and tradefoff on the power/efficiency of applications.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[digitect]

Vim's not easy to use?

I beg to differ: Cream for Vim.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Arandir]

VIM is *not* user friendly, and until it is VIM will stay with

I remember when VI first came out. It was a breath of fresh air. It really was user friendly, in relation to what was before. User friendliness is all relative.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[zootm]

But for a programmer who spends say 95% of the work day on text editing, learning an advanced efficient tool (maybe even Emacs) makes sense.

I think that an IDE would work yet better for this, and involve less learning. I certainly don't think that people, in general, edit text at a rate to justify this. Although, to be fair, once learned it will help, but I really don't think it would be significant. Could possibly (in the case of Vim in particular) cut down on RSI due to not having to move fingers from the keyboard though, I suppose.

We also disagree on what usability means. Learnability of an application is highly important for the casual user. But for the power user, learnability is pretty low priority, if the return in efficiency outweights time/effort spent on learning the application.

I'm using the definition that's in common usage — it's just what usability tends to be about these days, at least for apps in general.

I just wish to point out that modern UI designers have an unfair bias towards tailoring for the casual user, and tradefoff on the power/efficiency of applications.

I agree with everything but the word "unfair" — I think that a lot of the time such efficiency is overrated, and in general a more learnable tool is a better option. A tool that one uses for 95% of one's workday, perhaps, but as a programmer I have to say that even then, I'd be unlikely to actually gain much speed (I certainly don't type or edit text in complex ways for anything like 95% of my day, even if I am using a text editor). Much of the time though, people use many different tools for many different tasks, and have neither the will nor the rational justification to learn complex systems to use each.

I know there are people for whom Vim is a worthwhile investment of time (particularly if one is working frequently in a terminal environment), but I don't think a system like Vim is justifiable in many cases at all. A learnable, obvious system which is usable just through familiarity and metaphor is far more useful in most cases (and I can hear my good friend LaTeX weeping as I type this), since most systems are not used for enough of the time to warrant learning them.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[pthisis]

Is vi the most effective editor? I doubt it. By so much that you can actually win back the time you spent learning? I strongly doubt it. Remember, we're talking tenths of a second here.

I've often found it saved me a half hour or more over the readily available alternatives. It's just about the easiest install on a Windows box if you need to do a single easily scripted edit (munging field order and formatting, stuff like that).

It's also one of the easiest code browsers to install if you get dropped in somewhere where you need to navigate an unfamiliar source tree quickly (just ctags all the files and fire up vim), especially if there's more than just C/C++/Java/HTML/VB/ASP in the tree.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[(1 -sqrt(5))*(2**-1)]

vi sucks in dvorak. I use emacs.

At the very least, Dvorak users would remap hjkl to dhtn; even in emacs, however, C-x C-s C-x C-c becomes laborious.

Indeed, Ratpoison is the only application I know of that was developed specifically around Dvorak.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[hereticmessiah]

Never used Moe and don't know anything about it, but everything I said about Vim can be said about Emacs.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[hereticmessiah]

The conclusion most will draw from your argument rests on a faulty implication: that vi was intended to be more featureful than Notepad.

Anyone who drew that conclusion would be utterly wrong. I'm comparing vi (as in Vim) and Notepad as they are today, and how they've changed naturally since they were first conceived. Vi began as an attempt to put a much friendlier face on ex whereas Notepad started out as a basic text editor. That said, vi's ex heritage, while a barrier to immediate usability, gave it a great deal of power for doing heavy text-editing from its birth.

Vi isn't as "easy to use" as Notepad because Bill Joy lacked the technology. Notepad isn't as "powerful" as vi because Microsoft lacked the concern.

Yup.

None of this stopped Richard Stallman, who put everything into emacs. But then, nothing stopped Richard Stallman, who put way too much into emacs, and suggested the problem was that you lacked two extra fingers and an eidetic memory for command strings and an understanding of the obvious need for operating-system internals in a text editor...

That's an argument for another day, and not one that I'm particularly interested in. I might have been defending vi above, and I might use it quite a bit, but I'm an editor agnostic, or better yet, an editor apatheist. ;-)

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Radice Utente]

'l' to go right -- what could be easier??!?

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[urbanRealist]

I completely agree with you, but 'emerge vim' is easy.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[p2sam]

No!!

dvorak sucks in vi. :)

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[multiplexo]

http://www.asty.org/articles/20010702pine.html

The guy who wrote this is full of shit, and he's also the author if nano, a pico competitor. PINE/PICO were developed by the University of Washington, the chances of the UW implementing the kind of restrictive licensing that he refers to are slim to none. It's pure FUD, only this time from someone in the OSS community.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Afrosheen]

He clearly mentions his bias halfway through the article, but he makes a few good points. Distros like Mandrake, Redhat, Centos, etc. WILL NOT package pine or pico in their 'free' distros due to the licensing restrictions already stated. Yes, he does go a little over the top, but he tells the truth.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[J'raxis]

La2, ana Amriki. I've been learning 3arabi from online friends, in here mostly. I don't know much of the vocubulary yet (except some basic stuff to talk to the mobtadi2een on DALnet there). I can read the "chat alphabet" well enough and actual Arabic script somewhat.

Are there any good machine translators for Arabic out there yet? I used to use Ajeeb a bit, but they seem to've moved to a subscription site now. In my experience, machine translation's pretty bad at this point, anyway; I don't rely on it: Things like Babelfish seem to fall on their face with translations as simple as English-to-Spanish, two languages that can almost be translated between each other word-for-word.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ana 3arabi amriki kaman :-) ana min Virginia.

If you guys want I can stop by chat with you, assuming there isn't enough native Arabic speakers.

As for machine translation, it's a small startup I am working on with a friend. I don't really know of anything online. Unfortunately, most of Arabic culture online is theological and geared towards Muslim converts. There is little secular material :-(

There are tons of books online, but they're very advanced Arabic. If you like you can always meet with Arab Americans and they will be more than willing to help you.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Vintermann]

I'm getting more and more out of polite mode on this thread, but I was always offended by the Linux users who tried to tell me that to use Linux, I had to learn text editing all over again - what I knew wasn't good enough. I read the Operation Clambake site at the time, and it reminded me of the way scientologists demand their acolytes to "re-learn" reading.

When people are convinced to swallow their pride and make a big investment at the same time, I don't quite trust their judgement about it afterwards, because it would be hard to admit that it wasn't really necessary. So I'm not convinced of the benefits of vi(m), or even emacs. I am, however, convinced of the benefits of uniform interfaces - that opening and saving files should use the same shortcuts everywhere, even in text-mode apps, that cutting and pasting should work the same. If apps didn't adhere to some standards, we could waste years learning all the basic tasks we take for granted from the mac/windows world. I don't think text editors are entitled to an exception, because then they'd all want one :-)

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Vintermann]

Ah, it could be worse, you know. I heard about an old text editor, where writing the word "edit" (in the wrong mode presumably) would select (e)verything, (d)elete, and then (i)nsert the letter t, thus making undo impossible... they didn't have unlimited undo in those days... at least vim got that, right?

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Before the advent of the IBM PC, most keyboards had the ESC key near the TAB key, where the $#*^@&($# CAPS LOCK key is now. If you want a really sweet keyboard to edit text on, get an AT&T (Teletype) 610 or 615 terminal. Much better layout, and the keyboard feel is like the difference between playing a Casio and a Steinway.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[joeljkp]

Using vim for programming is just plain convenient, whether it saves lots of time (I believe it does) or not. I usually do scripting and such in vim, and I'm constantly annoyed when I have to use something that doesn't let you type 'dd' to cut an entire line, 'yy' to copy an entire line, '#dd' or '#yy' to cut or copy # lines, 'p' to paste, 'D', to erase rest of a line, etc. Doing that stuff with a mouse severely slows you down.

You can even do simple scripting by typing 'q[letter] [series of commands] q #@[letter]', which executes [series of commands] # times. Much faster than writing an external script if you only have to do it once.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[FuzzyDaddy]

I learned to use vi about ten years ago, and still use it quite a bit. However, I only use a tiny feature set - I'm not even sure how to do search and replace (no, don't tell me, I don't really care.) That being said, I do like that

1) It's on every unix system, and

2) It doesn't require any control characters to work.

So no matter how convoluted or weird my login path to the machine I'm editing on, I know I can edit a file. These, to me, are the principle defining features. Oh, and hitting a percent sign to find the corresponding bracket or paranthesis is also very handy...

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[fbjon]

It's more like one of those toy hand cranked drills that excels at drilling through cardboard.

It's very good at that.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[Anonymous Coward]

RedHat also dumped pine a year or two ago.

The whackiness of pine and its components is due strictly to the machinations of Mark Crispin, its primary author. Mark is very intelligent, and contributed to the creation of the IMAP standards and first solid IMAP open source servers.

But his attitudes about interoperability with other software are almost as bad as Dan Bernstein. If you ran the Wash-U IMAP on a hom-directory server and tried to access your account, the IMAP downloads would look for mailboxes in the directory that holds the IMAP client information, do a recursion and break.

He absolutely *refused* to allow any of the dozens of patches submitted over the years to make this a configuration option to enter IMAP's code base, so every decent IMAP client had to find ways to work around it. Mark insists that your mail server should be a dedicated IMAP server and only a dedicated IMAP server: this kind of lunacy is why people have dumped wu-imapd.

And you should have seen the fireworks when people published SSL plugins for it! Mark went around claiming that it was obviously a copyright violation and obviously a violation of the US encryption export laws, because he'd been involved in the one at WashU and *OBVIOUSLY* that was the source of the code. The European published plug-in turned out to be entirely different code, and was frankly far superior to the WashU code, and was legal to *IMPORT* under the weird US encryption export laws.

Unless Mark has gotten clear of Pine and Pico and its tools, they're never going to be popular again. These little licensing and feature rejections are the death of it.

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[feNIX77]

Well, as a programmer, Ive been using vi for several years. Maybe I'm slow, but it takes a lot longer than a couple days to be effective with it - and even then it just can't compete with a halfway decent IDE. I hate to say it, but its true. On a side note, it still kicks the hell out of emacs ;).

Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?

[bedessen]

Oh please. That's a load of crap. Whoever convinced you that a program couldn't be both powerful and easy to use was just covering for lack of design.

UltraEdit has almost all of the advanced features that you would ever want in a programmer's editor. And yet, it is a standard windows program - hey look, ^C copies! ^V pastes! Select with the mouse! Move with the arrow keys! No inane modal shit. Easy to use and extremely powerful at the same time.

I just want to say thanks.

[CyricZ]

I want to say thanks to all of the VIM developers who have helped create such an amazing piece of software. Indeed, I don't think we can even begin to consider how much other software has been written by developers using VIM.

Re:I just want to say thanks.

[grasshoppa]

Indeed. It wasn't until I found myself 5 pages into a web app that I realized I was using vim, and I was moving faster than my traditional windows based ide.

They deserve a huge pat on the back.

Re:I just want to say thanks.

[p2sam]

Vim is charity-ware, please donate.

http://iccf-holland.org/index.html

Re:I just want to say thanks.

[CodeRx]

Bram is now taking donations to help fund further Vim development. If you donate >10 euro's, you get to vote on new features. This is a great way for those of us who have written countless thousands of lines of code in Vim to show our appreciation.

Re:I just want to say thanks.

[IWannaBeAnAC]

Umm, what does that site have to do with vim ?

Re:I just want to say thanks.

[Mr. Hankey]

Start up a copy of vim, type ":about uganda" (without quotes) and press enter to find out. In short, the author of vim did volunteer work for the clinic for a year and has visited there on several occasions since then. He wishes for others to help the clinic as well.

Re:I just want to say thanks.

[aichpvee]

I love VI with all my body (including my pee pee).

Re:I just want to say thanks.

[merauder]

For other versions of vim, type this to get the same message :help uganda

Re:I just want to say thanks.

[Mr. Hankey]

I stand corrected, I believe it's ":help uganda" for all versions of vim. ;) Rather embarassing to be caught confusing mozilla and vim keywords/protocols.

Re:I just want to say thanks.

[IWannaBeAnAC]

Whoa, I get modded 0, Troll for asking a legitimate question? Hands up all readers who immediately knew vim had an association with that Ugandan charity - the posted link had no mention of vim in it!

Bugggg fix only. nice

[poind3xt3r]

Dozens of bugs have been fixed, runtime files were added and updated. There are no new features They are focusing more on fixing problems rather than add new features and in essence adding new bugs. Its rare to see updates which are meant for donzens of fixes. A smart approach.

Might have taken a while....

[ELiTe185]

More than a year? At least that's quicker than Microsoft....

Re:Might have taken a while....

[NetRAVEN5000]

Microsoft only fixes security holes, not bugs.

Re:Might have taken a while....

[wraithgar]

> Microsoft only fixes security holes, not bugs.

That is because none of their stuff HAS bugs, just undocumented features.

Re:Might have taken a while....

[NetRAVEN5000]

Oh, right - those pesky "features".

Yeah, I guess you're right - they went with the paperclip instead of the bug :)

Re:Might have taken a while....

[Maxhrk]

"It's not a bug, it is a feature."

Re:Might have taken a while....

[ne0n]

yeah, but microsoft finished notepad literally years ago....

Re:Might have taken a while....

[squoozer]

Your think MS is slow you should try using Debian stable!

Re:Might have taken a while....

[WillerZ]

Windows XP: 2001-10-25
Debian 3.0: 2002-07-19
Debian 3.1: 2005-06-06
Windows Vista: 2006-##-##

So there have been 2 stable debian releases since the last desktop windows release. On the server side the story is similar - over 3 years elapsed between Windows 2000 and Windows 2003.

Re:Might have taken a while....

[squoozer]

Good point. Strange though because release cycles in Debian feel longer than Windows. What I am about to say may offend some but here goes anyway. Perhaps it's because Windows is a more mature product and therefore there is little new stuff appearing (I'm thinking of using both OSes as desktop machines rather than server boxes as I wouldn't use a Windows box as a server). With Linux there are new features being released left right and centre. An 18 month old Linux installation feels really old. I suppose that will change eventually though.

Re:Might have taken a while....

[Anonymous Coward]

They code with VI, that's why it take a long time.

Re:Might have taken a while....

[jonadab]

The major text editors all use a slower release cycle. Do you remember how long we waited for Emacs 21, with its wealth of promised new features? That seems like a long time now, and yet Emacs 22 is not on anyone's radar yet, as far as I am aware. I'm not a vim fan, but the slow release cycle is not one of the reasons.

Re:Might have taken a while....

[arose]

The CVS version is very usable.

Re:Might have taken a while....

[jonadab]

> The CVS version is very usable.

Yeah, Emacs 21.0 was fairly usable too, but like I said, the slow release cycle isn't, IMO, a big deal with text editors. The major ones are a much more mature product than most other kinds of software these days, so we're not sitting here going, "I just can't go another *day* without having [some feature it doesn't have yet]", like we still are with e.g. OpenOffice (which *still* doesn't have parenthesis matching, for instance, a sore omission).

Re:A Year?

[Spit]

How many new features can you add to VI? VIM is near perfect software and has been for years. Free licence has done its work already with this software, troll.

That's not surprising.

[CyricZ]

I mean, it is the 6.4 release. Many projects typically do not add features after a major release. It's the minor point releases that focus on fixing bugs. So in this case it's the fourth round of bugfixes.

Re:That's not surprising.

[el americano]

If you live in Windows land, XP is the major release and SP1, 2, 3, ... are the point fixes. Introducing regressions AND backward incompatible features. The all-bug-fix release is indeed a refreshing contrast.

Re:That's not surprising.

[BrokenHalo]

What bugs? OK, I happen to prefer emacs (only because I cut my teeth on TECO), so I don't keep track of the vi(m) changelogs, but given the heat of the flames generated by zealots of both sides, I would have thought most bugs should have been ironed out by now.

Re:That's not surprising.

[hackstraw]

Many projects typically do not add features after a major release. It's the minor point releases that focus on fixing bugs. So in this case it's the fourth round of bugfixes.

Not to nitpick, but it depends on the software. For example, OS X has had numerous features added between 10.0 to 10.4. Some software packages with the X.Y.Z versioning use the third number for bug fixes, the second number for feature changes, and the first number for API changes. Honestly, I don't remember a feature that was that great in VIM since syntax highlighting and visual mode. Not to negate their efforts, or to say that there are not more features, but I've been happy with the features as they are for a long time. I us vim for everything from composing and replying to mail to viewing files to editing files. Probably, the only command I use more frequently is ls.

Intellisense #1 feature, pay Bram to add it

[Morganth]

I just wanted to point out that Intellisense (context-sensitive completion based on parsing or "understanding" code) is the #1 most voted VIM feature. You should add your own votes (with your hard-earned cash, if you will) if you want to see this feature come to VIM.

I personally do want this feature. It would make VIM the perfect text editor, IMO. Right now, VIM's completion is already pretty good, and a couple people have implemented completion as a plugin, but it usually ends up being a hack. I think Bram can figure out a nice way to do it for Vim 7.

People who know how to use VIM well find themselves really productive in it. But, that said, I end up being slightly more productive writing Java code in Eclipse, ONLY because of completion, even though all my other editing features from VIM aren't there (or are buried).

What I usually end up doing is keeping a console handy and switching between Eclipse and VIM when I have to do Java, but that's not that nice. I think Vim can pull this off.

http://www.vim.org/sponsor/vote_results.php

Re:Intellisense #1 feature, pay Bram to add it

[Anonymous Coward]

viPlugin is a commercial (but cheap) plugin that adds a vim layer on top of standard eclipse editors. While it does have some bugs, problems with some editors, and doesn't do everything vim does, it does have the basic command, visual, insert mode functionality that I can't live without.

http://www.satokar.com/viplugin/index.php

This plugin + eclipse is super productive (for me, anyway) when writing java.

Re:Intellisense #1 feature, pay Bram to add it

[kaisyain]

He's already added it in the Vim 7 sources. It was initially called occult completion but is now called omni completion. (Intellisense is a trademarked term.) Read the vim dev list for more details.

Re:Intellisense #1 feature, pay Bram to add it

[cryptoluddite]

I'd actually like to see a Java port of vim. I looked at the source code and it doesn't seem too hard. The vast majority of code is ifdef's for various architectures; this could all be replaced with one straight implementation in Java. The rest of the code seems fairly well encapsulated in object-like structures, so it should be somewhat easy.

This would make integrating jvim into eclipse and adding intellisense into it much easier. Of course it would be slower and hunkier, but it would still be cool to see all that code in Java. It would make a fun port imo.

Re:Intellisense #1 feature, pay Bram to add it

[Anthony Liguori]

People who know how to use VIM well find themselves really productive in it. But, that said, I end up being slightly more productive writing Java code in Eclipse, ONLY because of completion, even though all my other editing features from VIM aren't there (or are buried).

Sorry, I don't mean to be a bastard here, but this is my biggest pet peeve. I *hate* Intellisense or whatever the hell it's called. I think syntax autocompletion is ruining a new generation of programmers.

Here's my reasoning. Writing code that always works is hard. Writing code that works some of the time is easy. To write code that works all of the time you have to understand the exact behavior of every function you call and handle all possible scenarios properly. It's the difference between writing:

read(fd, &myInt, 4);

And then writing a wrapper around read that checks for EAGAIN, EINTR, performs endianness conversion, handles partial reads, and potentially implements this all asynchronously. Back to my original point though, it takes time to learn all of the sublities of an API. The best way to learn them is by studying the interfaces (reading manuals, man pages, whatever).

If you cannot remember the name of a function, go back to the manual and study it. You're going to not handle the edge cases of it. If it's Java, you'll ignore a potential exception. If it's C, you'll miss a potential error code.

I'm not against all the features in things like Eclipse. Some of the refactoring stuff is useful. It's just intellisense that drives me nuts.

Re:Intellisense #1 feature, pay Bram to add it

[aCapitalist]

Guess what. You don't have to use intellisense if you don't want to. That was easy wasn't it.

Re:Intellisense #1 feature, pay Bram to add it

[Anonymous Coward]

Get to it luddite...

Re:Intellisense #1 feature, pay Bram to add it

[plastik55]

Eh? When Eclipse offers completions of a function for me it shows me the javadoc! So when I 'm getting ready to call a function I can see all the edge cases and caveats documented for me on the screen. That's much better than being a macho/masochistic programmer and thinking I remember everything about a function from the last time I used in in a different context.

No one remembers all the edge cases, especially people who think they've got it all so memorized that they don't bother to double-check the documented behavior while they're calling functions.

Re:Intellisense #1 feature, pay Bram to add it

[tehshen]

If you cannot remember the name of a function, go back to the manual and study it.

Don't think it's just for when you forget something - most of the time, I remember how to type gtk_menu_get_attach_widget(), and what arguments it needs; I just can never be bothered to type it over and over again.

Re:Intellisense #1 feature, pay Bram to add it

[ThatComputerGuy]

Damn straight!

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It's been 16 seconds since you hit 'reply'.
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Re:Intellisense #1 feature, pay Bram to add it

[Jorrit]

Sorry but that reasoning is nonsense. I agree that you should know what a function does and how to use it but that doesn't mean that I should have to type the full name over and over again. Some libraries and API's have pretty long names for functions and they are not always easy to remember. Also some API's have a lot of functions. Some of which are not very intuitive. Since I have no control over those API's I have to use them and that's when IntelliSense is VERY handy indeed. I use IntelliJ at work for Java and in addition to IntelliSense IntellJ also shows you a short summary of the JavaDoc and all possible variants (overloads) of a function with all parameters and exceptions that are thrown.

And it is not only for remembering. IntelliSense is also very useful so you don't have to actually type the long names everytime.

Greetings,

Re:Intellisense #1 feature, pay Bram to add it

[Taladar]

...and it would be totally useless as Java programs only start to work long after the basic system install part where you first need your text editor. Text editor dependencies should be kept to a minimum (at least the non-optional ones) so it runs even on the most basic system.

Re:Intellisense #1 feature, pay Bram to add it

[Splab]

I got tab completion in my vim:
In my .vimrc:

function InsertTabWrapper()
        let col = col('.') - 1
        if !col || getline('.')[col - 1] !~ '\k'
                return "\<tab>"
        else
                return "\<c-p>"
        endif
endfunction

in .vim/ftplugin/c.vim:

set dictionary-=~/.vim/clist.txt dictionary+=~/.vim/clist.txt
set complete-=k complete+=k

this gives me auto completion in c files where .vim/clist is a list of c functions.

Re:Intellisense #1 feature, pay Bram to add it

[PhotoGuy]

If you cannot remember the name of a function, go back to the manual and study it. You're going to not handle the edge cases of it. If it's Java, you'll ignore a potential exception. If it's C, you'll miss a potential error code.
In the world of Unix system calls, I'd agree. In the world's of massive Win32 (and even Java) API's, it's more than one human can remember reasonably, so autocompletion suddenly becomes actually useful, and not a detriment to learning.

Re:Intellisense #1 feature, pay Bram to add it

[dFaust]

You might want to give the viPlugin for Eclipse a try.
http://www.satokar.com/viplugin

It gives you Vi-like editing inside of Eclipse while retaining any and all Eclipse features. The two downsides are a) It's not free. But it's about $18 US, so if you're a Vi-nut it's a small price to pay... b) It's not actually Vi running in Eclipse... the author is recreating Vi's functionality to run inside of Eclipse. Because of this, it's not (yet?) feature complete and has bugs of its own.

Personally, I think it's (overall) fantastic. I use Eclipse for a wide range of languages... some of the language plugins combined with the Vi plugin make it the hands down best IDE for many languages for me, personally.

Re:Intellisense #1 feature, pay Bram to add it

[symbolic]

I mostly use VIM, but I'd just be satisfied with *some* method of very quickly accessing the Java API docs. It's so large it takes a while to load using a standard browser, and the manner in which firefox handles searching isn't the most optimal. I'd love to be able to spend less time scrolling up and down the class list looking for what I need.

Re:Intellisense #1 feature, pay Bram to add it

[frodo from middle ea]

Already done :- jvi.

Re:Intellisense #1 feature, pay Bram to add it

[am 2k]

If it's Java, you'll ignore a potential exception.

Uhm, the Java compiler would complain about that.

Re:Intellisense #1 feature, pay Bram to add it

[Just Some Guy]

I think syntax autocompletion is ruining a new generation of programmers.

You're thinking in terms of small, well-defined libraries. Autocompletion isn't for them. Autocompletion is for huge, chaotic libraries like PHP. No matter how many thousand lines of code I wrote, I could never remember type1_foo(bar, qux) had the opposite prototype of type2_foo(qux, bar) for no apparent reason, and which one expected the arguments in which order. Having a little tooltip to remind be to put bar first this time would've saved countless hours of pointless debugging. It also would've made me much more productive, since I would've have been constantly thrashing between vim and php.net the whole time.

I may or may not agree with you regarding autocompletion and C, but I definitely disagree with you concerning certain other languages.

Re:Intellisense #1 feature, pay Bram to add it

[Maltheus]

Writing code that always works is hard. ....... If it's Java, you'll ignore a potential exception.

You're kidding, that's where the autocompletion most shines. In IntelliJ, uncaught exceptions are flagged in the code before I've even compiled. I can then hit alt-enter and I'm giving the choice to re-throw or catch the exception and all the code gets written out for me. Ever since using this IDE, I now easily write code that ALWAYS compiles and usually works and I crank out a ton of it. Hell, I even get greyed out warnings for potential run-time problems. Bugs do pop up now and then, but they're so insignificant and easy to fix that complaining about (most) bugs is like complaining about the BSOD in windows. I respond to the latter complaints with, "well, why the hell are you still using Windows 95 then?"

Re:Intellisense #1 feature, pay Bram to add it

[Touisteur]

I think you haven't gone so far with Eclipse.

Last time I tried it, it reminded me about any uncatched/untreated exception, any syntax error, immediately, and proposed to do the wrapping pattern by itself...

It warned me about any bad code I could make (in java)... It IS very helpful.

Maybe if the Java API wasn't so verbose, I would agree with your idea of "knowing the book"...

hats off to Bram, Bill Joy, and ATT

[yagu]

Sometimes I think Bram Moolenaar doesn't get enough credit for what he's done almost single-handedly. vim is an amazing piece of software. I've been using it almost since the day it arrived, and I was a vi user who thought vi was everything. But Bram brought vim and immediately began carefully, but boldly, extending vi, without the constraints of waiting for POSIX standards anointing any changes to vi.

Credit to Bill Joy also (and to AT&T, for "sc") for the pre-cursors and inspirations for vim.

vi in and of itself is a workhorse with its philosophy of "no gui or mouse necessary", and while vim now has its gui rendition (I never use it), the underlying philosophy and principles remain intact. Color syntax alone is worth it. If you haven't tried vim, you should. For raw and pure editing, there's nothing better (don't flame me, emacs people... please). I've often challenged people to editing faceoffs... where I'd dialup at 1200 baud (yes, I've been around for a while), and they could use ANY editor, at any connection speed, and I'd beat them at making a set of edits against a file.)

(Aside: how many vi users out there have spuriously put "www, jjj, bbb, G " in their comments when they used the browser text widgets.)

Re:hats off to Bram, Bill Joy, and ATT

[scooviduvoctagon]

(Aside: how many vi users out there have spuriously put "www, jjj, bbb, G " in their comments when they used the browser text widgets.)

Never let that happen again, use yzis and konqueror: http://yzis.org.free.fr/shots/khtml-textarea.jpg

Re:hats off to Bram, Bill Joy, and ATT

[chrysrobyn]

Editor faceoffs. I've won several of those with vi on my belt. When we get to use the whole toolkit, I'll often whip out some temp files and use awk a bit (for column processing). I've got two questions for someone out there with better vi skills than I.

How would a vi pro do CSV test processing? How would you take the text between the second and third commas and replace it with arbitrary text?

Ignoring CSV for a minute, if you'd like to replace all text from the 20th through 23rd characters of arbitrary text with the string "abcd", how would you do it? vi is very straightforward, so I assume I'll be able to understand only replacing "wxyz" in the 20th through 23rd column with "abcd".

In text processing, the workload determines the ability of a "ve" user (internal IBM tool) to surpass my vi efficiency. Typically, it's when the ve user mouse selects a column and then does replaces on it. I'd like to mimic this behavior using only my qwerty pad and some newly aquired vi skills.

Too many people forget: "vi is power".

Re:hats off to Bram, Bill Joy, and ATT

[bypedd]

Agreed. I am a little embarassed to say it was only about a month ago I started using ViM as opposed to vi, but I do love me a good ViM-tweaking session. Very gratifying :) And yet, the number one feature, to me, has always been the, well, vi commands. The escape mode and the hjkl navigation. I would use any IDE or editor in a minute if it would offer just the absolute basic vi features.

Re:hats off to Bram, Bill Joy, and ATT

[trb]

Credit to Bill Joy also (and to AT&T, for "sc") for the pre-cursors and inspirations for vim.

Joy wrote vi, with help from Mark Horton, both then at UC Berkeley. This back around 1980, on PDP-11s, and eventually Vaxen. If by se, you mean the Bell Labs PWB screen editor, that was quite a clumsy piece of software meant to compete with vi, and with the ports of emacs to UNIX (separate versions by Gosling and Zimmerman, predating the GNU effort). I am shocked that anyone remembers PWB se, it was short-lived and pretty obscure. How obscure? Is there one ref to it on the web? That's obscure!

While you're thanking, you might want to thank the UNIX folks who brought us "ed," Ken Thompson (and Kernighan wrote the docs, as always). The ed command set survives as the basis for vi/vim :command mode - including the regexes. ed was based on editors that came before it of course, especially QED.

Re:hats off to Bram, Bill Joy, and ATT

[ScriptedReplay]

I'm sure there's a better way to do these, but here's a try off the top of a vim noob:

How would you take the text between the second and third commas and replace it with arbitrary text?
:%s/\(\([^,]*,\)\{2}\)[^,]*\(,.*\)$/\1arbitrary text\3/gc

Ignoring CSV for a minute, if you'd like to replace all text from the 20th through 23rd characters of arbitrary text with the string "abcd", how would you do it?
:%s/^\(.\{19}\).\{4}\(.*\)$/\1abcd\2/gc

Please feel free to correct me/improve on this. New vim tricks are always appreciated :-)

Re:hats off to Bram, Bill Joy, and ATT

[yagu]

Yes, I agree, there are more to thank. I was using "ed" when I was introduced to "sc". And I even used qed.

And, did you read, and do you still have your copy of that BSD book, kind of a paperback (with the plastic spine binding), with all of the papers (an odd book, but one of the most useful I'd ever read), including lots of good stuff on nroff, etc? There were more than one, but the one I'm thinking of had a cartoon of a devil (if I remember correctly) poking at "unix" with his trident from behind a rock. Great book. (Now I'm going to have to go find it -- I know I never threw that one away.)

Re:hats off to Bram, Bill Joy, and ATT

[b17bmbr]

How would a vi pro do CSV test processing?

with a perl script. written on vim of course!!

Re:hats off to Bram, Bill Joy, and ATT

[morcego]

Ignoring CSV for a minute, if you'd like to replace all text from the 20th through 23rd characters of arbitrary text with the string "abcd", how would you do it?

You mean something like this ? :%s@^\(.\{19\}\).\{4\}@\1abcd@g

Although I would usually do that using sed, not vim.

In text processing, the workload determines the ability of a "ve" user (internal IBM tool) to surpass my vi efficiency. Typically, it's when the ve user mouse selects a column and then does replaces on it. I'd like to mimic this behavior using only my qwerty pad and some newly aquired vi skills.

Oh my god, they are still using that ? I remember the religious wars of VE versus VX when I worked there, pretty much like the VI versus EMACS wars we see out here.

The real trick is a good background in sed and regular expressions. Then you can use :%s to your heart content.

Re:hats off to Bram, Bill Joy, and ATT

[morcego]

Actually, you don't need to match anything after what you want to replace, neither use "gc". Even "g" is not needed, since you will only replace 1 occurence on each line.

Check my exemple a few posts below, even tho I do use "g" there.

The most simple command for this would be: :%s@^\(.\{19\}).\{4\}@\1abcd@

I also like to use @ instead of /, since it makes it easier to read.

Re:hats off to Bram, Bill Joy, and ATT

[Waffle Iron]

The second one might be simpler to do visually. Put the cursor at column 20 of the first line, then:

<Ctrl-V> G23lcabcd <ESC>

Re:hats off to Bram, Bill Joy, and ATT

[ScriptedReplay]

indeed (and that is proof that I can sometimes type while asleep, I guess) So strike the ending matches and gc from both examples :-)

you don't need to escape the closing curly brace though - \{19} and \{4} will do just fine. And I agree to the use of something other than / - at some point I became partial to ? myself, but @ is a nice choice (unless you make heavy use \@-type matches: \@= and \@! can be useful)

Re:hats off to Bram, Bill Joy, and ATT

[morcego]

Which proves that it is (nearly) impossible for a single person to completely master VIM :)

Tkx for the closing curly brace tip.

I might keep escaping it, tho, since (just tested) you need to escape it with sed. Using the same syntax in both utils is easier to remember :)

Re:hats off to Bram, Bill Joy, and ATT

[Lisandro]

You should try the GUI version of vim (gvim), if only because it's much easier to set the looks of the editor (colors/font combination); when i'm in a GUI session i always use gvim with the darkblue colorscheme, which i find very easy on my eyes.

    Anyway, gvim, besides some icons and gui filedialogs, works exactly the same as the regular vim. It's all about comfort :)

Re:hats off to Bram, Bill Joy, and ATT

[raehl]

Is there one ref to it on the web?

Way to ruin it buddy.

Re:hats off to Bram, Bill Joy, and ATT

[StarFire_FIN]

For text between second and third commas, I'd use:

02f,lct,<arbitrary text>

As for columns 20-23, with vim I'd use either Visual Block mode, like this:

019l^V<amount of columns>j3lcabcd<Esc>

or macros, like this:

qq019lc4labcd<Esc>jq

and then repeat the macro for all desired lines using @q.

Plain vi doesn't support recording macros using q, so I'd have to type the macro in manually first (the part between qq and q), then put in some register. To use the register q, one would use "qd$ to delete the current line into register q. After that, you can use @q like you would in vim.

Re:hats off to Bram, Bill Joy, and ATT

[alech]

(Aside: how many vi users out there have spuriously put "www, jjj, bbb, G " in their comments when they used the browser text widgets.)

not really, but for serious editing I use the mozex extension within Firefox, so all the bigger (Wiki mostly) editing is done using vim as well.

Re:hats off to Bram, Bill Joy, and ATT

[corngrower]

Vi is indeed usable at 1200 baud. This mode of editing allowed me to avoid a 1 hour commute each way for 3 months. The old vi used the 'curses' libray and the termcap settings which allowed it to be very efficient, in terms of minimizing the number of characters that needed to be sent across that 1200 baud line to control the display.

Re:hats off to Bram, Bill Joy, and ATT

[trb]

And, did you read, and do you still have your copy of that BSD book...

Yes, I worked at Bell Labs in those days, and I still have lots of old UNIX docs. Sounds like you are talking about the 5-volume set of 4BSD manuals, which built on the Bell Labs UNIX v7 manuals. Dennis Ritchie has a page with links to them and to other interesting UNIX historical docs.

Re:hats off to Bram, Bill Joy, and ATT

[Anonymous Coward]

and, depending on the baud rate, vi will alter the number of lines it will draw on any movement off the screen... nice touch for sure -yagu as AC

Re:hats off to Bram, Bill Joy, and ATT

[Anonymous Coward]

Joy wrote vi, with help from Mark Horton, both then at UC Berkeley.

A little off topic, but you may be interested in the fact that Mark Horton is now Marry-Anne Horton.

Re:hats off to Bram, Bill Joy, and ATT

[cloudmaster]

Column select by typing ctrl+v and moving the cursor around, then doing anything you would typically do is visual mode. I find myself using s to add spaces/commas/etc a lot.

Re:hats off to Bram, Bill Joy, and ATT

[cloudmaster]

I'm not sure about the wwwjjG in my comments, but I can't count how many times I've cursed MS products (IE, specifically - I use some sites are work that are IE-only) when I've pressed "esc-wq" after I'm done editing, and cleared the form (which redo doesn't seem to ever want to repopulate).

Re:hats off to Bram, Bill Joy, and ATT

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? What's wrong with him?

Yes, but is it better than emacs??

[borgheron]

Hehe. Obligatory emacs comment here. Anyway I've never understood why people feel this compulsion to use a mode-based editor when there are so many wonderful editors out there today. I wonder if any of the VIM developers use emacs to develop VIM. :)

GJC

Re:Yes, but is it better than emacs??

[CyricZ]

Perhaps the use VIM for the same reason you seem to enjoy using NeXTSTEP-styled systems: they just find it works for them. It allows them to be as productive as they can be.

Re:Yes, but is it better than emacs??

[Hamster Of Death]

Some people grow attached to their pointy sticks and stone hammer tools when building a sub par house.

Re:Yes, but is it better than emacs??

[mnemonic_]

I wonder if any of the VIM developers use emacs to develop VIM.

Well I used to wonder what the absolute limit of stupidity wass, but no longer. I think I've found it.

Re:Yes, but is it better than emacs??

[rebug]

Anyway I've never understood why people feel this compulsion to use a mode-based editor when there are so many wonderful editors out there today.

Uhm, because some of us like modal editors?

Re:Yes, but is it better than emacs??

[CyricZ]

Gregory John Casamento is not a stupid man by any means. Indeed, he is responsible for some amazing work. Take Gorm, for example. It brings the cutting edge development techniques of NeXT to Linux and other non-NeXT/non-Apple systems.

Re:Yes, but is it better than emacs??

[geminidomino]

Some people like knowing the editor that is 99% certain to be available.
Some people don't like using six of their 8 home-key fingers, plus nose and tongue, to toggle buckybits.
Some people would rather have a 1.5MB editor than a 40+MB monstrosity taking up pr0n space.

(Swami Salami says: "Some people don't have a sense of humor", in response to the future downmodding storm by cranky EMACS users.)

Eighty Megs and Constantly Swapping!

Re:Yes, but is it better than emacs??

[Anonymous Coward]

Notepad is better than emacs. I could write code on paper, scan it in with my scanner using OCR, correct all the mistakes in MS Word, convert it to a .c file, and it would still be better than emacs. Talk about building a house with sticks and stone tools.

Re:Yes, but is it better than emacs??

[mabinogi]

> Some people grow attached to their pointy sticks and stone hammer tools when building a sub par house.
and everyone else uses Vim.

Re:Yes, but is it better than emacs??

[arodland]

Because it's not only faster, but easier on my hands? Two bits of state is not by any means too much to have to keep in my head. And in vim, you have the nice status bar to tell you where you are in case you went off somewhere and forgot. It'll even show you your half-finished normal-mode commands if you like. So overall it's faster and easier than, well, anything.

Re:Yes, but is it better than emacs??

[ari_j]

I wonder if any of the VIM developers use emacs to develop VIM.

I don't know, and I'm not a developer of Vim or Emacs, but I have hacked Emacs with vim.

Re:Yes, but is it better than emacs??

[bcrowell]

Some people like knowing the editor that is 99% certain to be available.
Well, yeah, when I do a fresh install of Linux, emacs is unavailable for the first 23 seconds after the unstall is complete :-)

Some people don't like using six of their 8 home-key fingers, plus nose and tongue, to toggle buckybits.
It does baffle me that some people use Esc for meta. I just use Alt.

Some people would rather have a 1.5MB editor than a 40+MB monstrosity taking up pr0n space.
For people who want something small, there are various trimmed down emacs versions, such as zile.

Re:Yes, but is it better than emacs??

[blakestah]

I wonder if any of the VIM developers use emacs to develop VIM.

Blatant troll response.

Yes, we all know that the BEST solution for a text editor requires a full LISP interpreter.

Re:Yes, but is it better than emacs??

[YankeeInExile]

Here's a little story that will make you realize how great emacs and vi(m) really are. http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed.msg.html

Re:Yes, but is it better than emacs??

[ocelotbob]

I use FreeBSD and never, ever look at that monstrosity known as emacs. Emacs is proof positive that RMS is a certifiably insane.

Re:Yes, but is it better than emacs??

[grcumb]

"I have hacked Emacs with vim."

Heh, I had a giggle this morning when I checked my history file and found:

477 vi .emacs
478 vi .emacs
479 emacs&
...
507 vi .emacs

8^)

Re:Yes, but is it better than emacs??

[ari_j]

Mine looks like that a lot. I like Emacs for its Lisp editing features and SLIME. TeX work is also easier in Emacs, as is writing a plain text file of prose. Just about everything else (including editing .emacs) is better done in vim.

Re:Yes, but is it better than emacs??

[Anonymous Coward]

So what, does all the crack give you encyclopedia powers, or you just have a Wikipedia hotkey?

Re:Yes, but is it better than emacs??

[anpe]

I've used emacs for a while, and I loved it. However, it results that in _my_ particular way of typing, sitting in front of the computer, etc... this resulted in a RSI : the shortcuts make an intensive use of the little finger (the Ctrl key).
I switched to vim, and I must say it's great. I still use emacs from time to time for some obscure modes I wrote.

Re:Yes, but is it better than emacs??

[Anonymous Coward]

Just use viper-mode. Then you can use your emacs modes and vi keybindings simultaneously.

Re:Yes, but is it better than emacs??

[mechsoph]

Well, considering how much vimscript is growing....

I think there's an addendum to the rule that all software must grow until it can read mail; all software must grow until it implements half of common lisp. Well, at least it has to implement its own scripting language. Emacs just decided to go that route from the start.

(quoth a vim user)

Re:Yes, but is it better than emacs??

[George Reilly]

I wonder if any of the VIM developers use emacs to develop VIM. :)

I wrote most of the Win32 console-mode port of Vim that appeared in Vim 4.x, back in 1995-96. My dirty little secret is that I did most of the work using Emacs' Viper mode. At the time, I found Vim to be too rudimentary for serious development work. I have long since completely abandoned Emacs (I never got beyond 19.34), and I use Vim for almost everything.

Re:Yes, but is it better than emacs??

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats because you're a CUNT!

Only if they find a good way of doing it.

[CyricZ]

Indeed, finding out a "nice" way of doing it is essential. Nothing is more of a hassle than having Eclipse or the Visual Studio IDE autocomplete a keyword, identifier, and so on, incorrectly. Going back and correcting its error can take three or four times the amount of time it would've taken to type in the text manually.

At least it's possible that it would not be enabled by default.

Re:Only if they find a good way of doing it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing is more of a hassle than having Eclipse or the Visual Studio IDE autocomplete a keyword, identifier, and so on, incorrectly.

Except perhaps using an editor without Intellisense and having to manually nagivate through pages upon pages of docs (or, God forbid, raw uncommented code) every time you want to figure out what functions an object has, or what the name of that namespace is, or whether that variable is camel case or underscored, or the order of that function's arguments. Which takes up more and more programmer time as we move toward using more and more libraries, each consisting of hundreds to thousands of functions. Today when you're building complex componentized software it's impossible to memorize every API call you need like you could in the "good" old days, back when vi was modern.

Bug fixes

[patrickclay]

I hope they fixed the bug that made you type all those weird key combinations to write to a file and save.

Re:Bug fixes

[jZnat]

:w

Wow, ain't that hard?

Type "ZZ" to save and quit. Those are indeed capitalised, and Shift is right next to Z.

Re:Bug fixes

[dtfinch]

I entirely agree. Editors like vi and emacs are decades behind the rest of the world in terms of usability and intuitiveness. Luckily, on a remote server I can always launch a modern text editor using X11 forwarding over ssh. I know just enough vi to type, search, save, and exit. If I hit q without hitting :, it switches to some recording mode and stops responding to normal commands. It I hit # when not in insert mode, it put a bright yellow highlight on whatever word the cursor was over, which persists even after I exit vi and start it again, until I manually edit the config file to delete the highlight keyword. I'm sure there are easy ways out of both problems, and the many others I've encountered, if I memorized the help file rather than just skimming it a few times, but I'd rather not spend any more time than I need to with such a backward piece of sh^Hoftware. I only use vi for very minor edits, like changing a single value in a config file. For everything else, I use a real text editor.

Re:Bug fixes

[Waffle Iron]

You can fix it yourself. Add to your .vimrc file:

nmap <C-S> :w<CR>
imap <C-S> <Esc>:w<CR>

Now Ctl+S works just like it does in notepad.exe.

Re:Bug fixes

[dedazo]

Or you could just source mswin.vim (typically found under $VIMRUNTIME) and essentially have a MS-style keymap emulation. Put it in your ~/.vimrc, and make sure you include the 'behave mswin' line before you source it.

Re:Bug fixes

[tabbser]

I'm happy with Vim. I use it all the time, it's my editor of choice. I've worked in many shops, some emacs and some vi, and heard all the religious comments about both (over the last 20 years)

I have to say that the above is probably the silliest I've heard in a long time though.
Just because you have not taken the time to learn either of these great editors, but instead are happy to pipe X over an SSH connection so you can 'point-click-drool', doesn't really qualify you to dismiss them.

You really don't need to learn much to make good headway on both these editors, you'll become a capable very quickly, assuming you have the capacity in you to begin with.

Also, it'll improve your sex life, make your cell phone battery last a month and you'll be able leap tall buildings in a single bound.

Re:Bug fixes

[darilon]

Forget using the built in help files for vim. Just google up one of the many good quick tutorials that teach you the important things you need to know to use vi fairly effectively. After you've done that and used vim for any length of time you can learn how to be an efficient editor of text. By becoming a slave to gui based editors, you lose many of the efficiencies that you can get from text only editors.

Re:Bug fixes

[Waffle Iron]

If you are running vim on X11, then just select File->Exit, just like any other editor. *Any* editor not running under a GUI will have some kind of obscure key sequence to exit; you shouldn't be surprised about that. Some, like nano, will dedicate a couple of screen lines to remind you full-time what those keystrokes are. That's great, but a professional developer probably won't want to reserve valuable screen real-estate for that purpose unless they suffer from severe amnesia.

The yellow marker highlights whatever you've last searched for. It's an incredibly useful feature. If you can't remember the official command to turn it off (:nohighlight, or :noh for short), just search for something nonexistent like /jfjf.

Re:Bug fixes

[Jugalator]

His point is that :wZZ isn't exactly the first key salute a novice thinks of to save & exit. ;-)

Re:Bug fixes

[jrockway]

Maybe the novices should read the fucking manual then?

People complain to me that emacs is too hard to use, too. I don't get it -- the first screen that comes up says "C-x C-f to open a file, C-x C-s to save, C-x C-c to quit." They tell me that they can't use emacs because they can't open a file, save it, or quit. If only they turned on their brain and did some reading, they would know how to perform these SIMPLE tasks.

I am not a vi fan, but I at least know how to do simple editing when I'm on a system without emacs.

Seriously, people. Read the fucking manual. nano and its kin are fine for really really really simple things, but eventually you're going to have to learn how to use a real editor.

Re:Bug fixes

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad notepad.exe intuitively uses F12 to save ;)

(... or was it S-F12? can't remember... eh)

Re:Bug fixes

[Jacek Poplawski]

but that's just :x

Re:Bug fixes

[Zwets]

make sure you include the 'behave mswin' line before you source it.

So vim can actually make mswin behave itself? That's truly impressive! :-)

Re:Bug fixes

[Anonymous Coward]

It's ^S in the Win2k/XP version of Notepad.

Re:Bug fixes

[some guy I know]

it put a bright yellow highlight on whatever word the cursor was over, which persists even after I exit vi and start it again, until I manually edit the config file to delete the highlight keyword.

The bright yellow highlight is highlighting text that matches the current search expression.
It's where you'll go if you type "n" or "N" in command mode.
If you want to get rid of the highlighting, you don't have to edit the config file.
Instead, just search for the end of line, which isn't (normally) printed.
Here is the command: "/$", followed by the <RETURN> key.

Re:Bug fixes

[Anonymous Coward]

Tried both of those, plus ^S that my siblng post mentioned.
None of them work (in MS-Windows 95).
Oh, well, it's back to <ESC> F S <RETURN>.

Have both.

[tepples]

Try viper-mode. Love viper-mode. Then try Vim. It's viper-mode without the bloat.

I for one...

[_Hellfire_]

...welcome our new 18 fingered overlords!

(yes I'm a daily vim user)

Keep up the fantastic work guys - vim is one of those apps which is actually a pleasure to use.

Re:I for one...

[aCapitalist]

...welcome our new 18 fingered overlords!

Uhhmm...wrong editor. None of that CTRL-META-BLAH-SHIFT-I_MUST_BE_AN_ALIEN_TO_USE_THI S_EDITOR business in vim...for the most part.

That's nothing!

[earthbound kid]

The last version of Emacs came complete with Vim v. 10.03c! ;)

Re:That's nothing!

[Anonymous Coward]

What? Still no flight simulator?

Re:A Year?

[keesh]

Then you might want to look at vim 7, which is where all the features are going. Spell checking, intelligent autocompletion, a hell of a lot of new tweaks that make vim even nicer to work with.

The 6.x branch is in 'maintenance mode', meaning it's bugfixes only. The 7.x branch is where all the work's going on, and vim 6 to vim 7 is already like going from vi to vim.

happy vomiting!

[Anonymous Coward]

because I use vi.

Not only is it a fantastic editor...

[CyricZ]

... but it is also a fantastic pager. Using it instead of less or more to quickly scan over source code is a blessing! Indeed, you get the syntax highlighting of a GUI editor, but without the overhead. You can view files instantly from the command line, and they're very nicely formatted.

Re:Not only is it a fantastic editor...

[jZnat]

I thought less was made in an effort to emulate vim in a sense as well. At least, that's what its manpage says.

Re:Not only is it a fantastic editor...

[CyricZ]

Why use the half-assed less when you have have the real VIM? The memory requirement differences between the two are basically irrelevant these days, and speedwise they're indistinguishable.

Re:Not only is it a fantastic editor...

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying that you've never needed to paginate piped input?

Re:Not only is it a fantastic editor...

[Anonymous Coward]

I use both vim and less. One issue is that vim's key mappings are optimized for editing, where those of less are optimized for browsing. For example, in less j and k scroll the window by one, and f and b do pageup/pagedown. In vim, j and k move the cursor, (which isn't really very useful in a pager), and you have to use the more difficult ^E and ^Y to scroll the page instead. You also have to hit ^F and ^B to page up and down, because f and b are mapped to more cursor movement commands. The q command in less is also far easier to type than either :q or ZQ.

Then there's the general problem that many of the keys in vim are mapped to editing commands that modify the file, so accidentally hitting a random key will likely give a warning message about modifying a read-only file and require an undo operation.

Re:Not only is it a fantastic editor...

[Tumbleweed]

...it's also a tasty salad dressing! Mmm...now *that's* _Vimtastic_!

Re:Not only is it a fantastic editor...

[Mad Merlin]

Because less doesn't have to read the entire file into RAM before it can display it? Try opening a several hundred meg file in less, then try it in vim, and you'll see what I mean.

Re:Not only is it a fantastic editor...

[Anonymous Coward]

VIM does not load entire file into memory.

Re:Not only is it a fantastic editor...

[some guy I know]

VIM does not load entire file into memory.

It still scans through the entire file, copying the whole thing to a temp file, before it displays anything.
More/less doesn't.
Use the right tool for the right job.
For example, tail -1000 filename | more to scan through the last 1000 lines of a huge file is much more efficient than using vi to do it.
OTOH, vi is better if you are going to be going back and forth in the file, searching for text in context, etc.
Use the right tool for the right job.

Re:Bugggg fix only. nice

[keesh]

No no no. The features are being added in the 7.x branch, which you can get from CVS. 6.x is purely for maintenance (ie bugfixes). This is a mixed blessing... It means 6.x is extremely stable, but if you want new goodies like spellchecking and intelligent autocompletion, you have to switch to the CVS only branch.

It's a tricky decision. Some projects are way over on the side of "keep throwing out new versions with new features and new bugs". Vim is way over on the other extreme: "release 'new feature' releases every few years and keep the stable branch working". For end users it's a mixed blessing.

Fortunately, the 7.x branch is pretty much stable (as in every day usable) at the moment. I've been using the Gentoo ebuilds (package.masked), which means I get a CVS snapshot which has been at least reasonably well checked and had any icky bugs fixed. I'd hate to miss out on the new toys. The 'numberwidth feature alone makes it worth the upgrade, even if 'spell didn't exist.

Re:A Year?

[DaCool42]

There have been a lot of great features added in the past few years. Here's a few of the major ones: folding, improved syntax highlighting, quickfix.

Did someone mention the Fantastic Four?

[Rhinobird]

Because, I thought that I distinctly heard the words "Flame On".

Like priming an enclosed area with flammable fumes. Someone is going to mention Emacs and this place is going to explode.

Re:Did someone mention the Fantastic Four?

[kevinadi]

Slashdot should have a strict no-posting rule to certain topics to stop us embarrasing ourselves. Topics that came to mind:

emacs & vi
postgresql & mysql
linux & bsd
anything involving Bill Gates & his company
anything involving Paris Hilton & her companies

Re:Did someone mention the Fantastic Four?

[Shano]

Great idea. And as an added bonus, it'll cut the bandwidth bills by at least 50%.

please mod up parent

[Anonymous Coward]

pseudo-mod: "+1 Interesting" -- good point

Wishes for the next VIM and why use Vim

[MrBoring]

First, I use VIM not so much because I think it's the best text editor, but because it's corrupted my thought process so much that I keep using those cryptic Vi commands in other programs when typing more than a few words. That said, I do feel most productive in Vim or Vi on systems which don't have Vim (such as z/OS). People don't understand why one would use Vi, until they've mastered it so well that they can nearly look at a point in the screen or think of where they want to be, and the cursor arrives there without remembering which keystrokes got them there. One of my biggest reasons for using it is that there is *no* project, workspace, solution or whatever, that I have to set up before being able to do real work. I like that.

As for wishes:
1. Better language completion, if any, language completion.
2. Better editing of binary files.
3. Support for multiple code pages. This may be possible already, but I haven't deciphered the manual enough to figure out how.
4. Support for working with change control systems. I'd like to be able to edit a file in a CCS and have the title bar reflect the release, level, etc that I'm editing, rather than a cryptic temporary file.
5. A better head on my own shoulders to remember all the set commands needed to operate it.

I really can't complain though, because if the above never got implemented, I'd still use it. I've used the editor for years, and still keep learning it.

Re:Wishes for the next VIM and why use Vim

[p2sam]

Vim has support for split screen editing for years. And vertical split screen is supported since Version 6.

Re:Wishes for the next VIM and why use Vim

[kevinadi]

I thought I'm the only one who's been typing Vim commands into notepad or word. Seriously, Vim is more of a lock-in than MS word will ever be. Cryptic file format? Bah! The lock-in is in your mind!

Re:Wishes for the next VIM and why use Vim

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out vifm if you need a file manager. Handy for those who have problems going between vi and "regular world" programs.

Re:Wishes for the next VIM and why use Vim

[Anonymous Coward]

Some Split Screen Vim Commands (the ones I typically use)

"vsplit" creates a vertical split on the current file

"split" creates a horizontal split on the current file

"vsplit [filename]" creates a vsplit opening to a different file (creates if nonexistant)

"split" [filename]" creates a split opening to a different file (creates if nonexistant)

"close" closes current panel (! to force, otherwise save changes first)

ctrl-WW changes active split window

Re:Wishes for the next VIM and why use Vim

[Anonymous Coward]

Where did the GP mention split screen?
The only thing that I can think of is that you misinterpreted "multiple code pages" to mean "split screen".
"Multiple code pages" means something else entirely.

Re:Wishes for the next VIM and why use Vim

[spydir31]

About code pages, file formats, etc take a look at

• :h 'fenc'
• :h 'ff'
• :h ++enc

about the status/title bar, they're settable, via 'stl' and 'titlestring'

Re:Wishes for the next VIM and why use Vim

[MrBoring]

I did mean multiple code pages, and not split screens which I do use regularly. I have occaisional need to edit text files in UTF-16, EBCDIC, and other code pages.

Regards,
Boring.

How do you do a character literal?

[wk633]

Ok, some vim guru on here must know, what's the windows vim equivelent of vi's ^V? In vim, it does a frickin' paste! So how do I search for, say ^M? Or enter a macro which includes inserts I need to esc from? Not being able to find that anywhere in the help is the one thing I hate about vim.

Re:How do you do a character literal?

[Superfluid Blob]

^Q

Re:How do you do a character literal?

[Slayk]

It only pastes on Windows or if you have vim open in GNOME-Terminal (which overrides the vim keybinding), and I believe you can controll that by editing your _vimrc or in the case of gnome-term by changing the keybinding in the edit menu.

If what I just did in gvim is any indication, ^V works just peachy in Vim.

Re:How do you do a character literal?

[tootlemonde]

what's the windows vim equivelent of vi's ^V?

That would be Ctrl-Q (while in insert mode or entering a search string)

Re:How do you do a character literal?

[wk633]

THANK YOU! I don't know who modded me 'funny', and maybe I should be embarassed for having to ask, but you made my month!

And to keep this on topic, I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned that there is no editor more powerful than vi(m). The proof is that vi can be used to emulate a turing machine.

http://www.cs.brown.edu/people/jfh/personal_other/ amusements/hitz.html/

Re:How do you do a character literal?

[Superfluid Blob]

Welcome :) Another nice tip: if you want to do some complicated search and replace, it's often a lot quicker to do :perldo s/foo/bar/ rather than remember the vim regexp syntax.

Re:How do you do a character literal?

[ScriptedReplay]

So how do I search for, say ^M?
/Ctrl-V Ctrl-M

or, in Windows (where vimrc has 'behave mswin' which maps ^V to ^Q among other things)
/Ctrl-Q Ctrl-M

Heck, for ^M you can just use /\r - the above are meant to work with arbitrary Ctrl-something

Re:How do you do a character literal?

[Mostly a lurker]

there is no editor more powerful than vi(m). The proof is that vi can be used to emulate a turing machine.

To act as devil's advocate, the fact that a program can emulate a Turing machine is not absolute proof that it is well suited to editing files. For instance, how would you like to use 8088 assembler to edit your program source?

I have mixed feelings about vi. It is a good editor, but it is a formidable strain on the memory cells. I prefer an editor that is more intuitive for basic editing but which has strong macro language support for power use.

Re:How do you do a character literal?

[WillerZ]

Remove: :so $VIMRUNTIME/mswin.vim

from your _vimrc

Re:How do you do a character literal?

[Sylvain]

This one bothered me for so long, I saw your comment and decided to look for the solution (one more time). Here it is (CTRL+Q)

http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/gui_w32.html #CTRL-V-alternative

Re:How do you do a character literal?

[cymantic]

Ctrl Q Ctrl M will give you ^M.

Re:How do you do a character literal?

[Ramses0]

You're in "windows compatible mode" (mswin) ... some of it is nice, some of it is total luser. I usually turn it off, but it means that I don't get "ctrl-v" for paste, I have to remember: "+p ... but once you get used to it it's not that bad! ;^)

--Robert

Re:How do you do a character literal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not being able to find that anywhere in the help is the one thing I hate about vim.

Esc :help The help isn't context sensitive, but the vim folks need to see a particular feature in use for a couple of decades before they adopt it. Love the editor, though!

Re:How do you do a character literal?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's interesting that ^Q has the same function in emacs.

Is this a case of vi stealing features from emacs? Let the flamewars begin! ;)

Re:How do you do a character literal?

[hackstraw]

Is this a windows specific question? Because I've always used ^V, and I just tried ^Q and it did not work.

Re:How do you do a character literal?

[Superfluid Blob]

Yep - windows uses ^V for paste, so ^Q is mapped instead.

Re:How do you do a character literal?

[Zathrus]

Ok, your question has been answered... here's mine.

Why on earth does ^F end visual mode in vim on Windows? This happens in both vim and gvim (I have 6.3 installed at the moment, but it's happened in previous versions too).

This is annoying and completely different from *nix behavior. I've read various help pages, looked through mswin.vim, etc. and can't figure out why this happens. There's no mention of it in the visual mode help pages.

Anyone?

Re:How do you do a character literal?

[Anonymous Coward]

This must be again different in GVIM, because ^Q just puts me in visual mode. The loss of ^V has always galled me in GVIM. I'm usually stuck doing ^KCR for a ^M. I've been doing that so long that I'm starting to get a bit lost when dropping down to plain old vi these days.

Then again, I'm pretty lazy with fixing my vimrc exactly the way I like it so I guess it's my own fault.

Re:How do you do a character literal?

[cunts]

Often with Vim it's a case of knowing how to use the integrated help. Here you could've started out by looking for help on Ctrl-V:

:help Ctrl-V

This brings up the following information:

CTRL-V start Visual mode blockwise. Note: Under Windows
                        CTRL-V could be mapped to paste text, it doesn't work
                        to start Visual mode then, see |CTRL-V-alternative|.

In the Vim help system, terms surrounded by vertical bars are hyperlinks. Position the cursor between the bars and press Ctrl-] to jump to the help on 'CTRL-V-alternative', and there it tells you about Ctrl-Q.

Re:How do you do a character literal?

[wk633]

"the fact that a program can emulate a Turing machine is not absolute proof that it is well suited to editing files"

No, but it is evidence of the lunacy of anyone who takes the vi vs. emacs war seriously :-)

Re:How do you do a character literal?

[p2sam]

About the Ctrl-v / paste problem. You're probably running Vim in Windows. By default it uses the mswin.vim script to make it behave more like a standard Windows app. Just make sure you disable mswin.vim.

Re:How do you do a character literal?

[marms]

Another nice tip: if you want to do some complicated search and replace, it's often a lot quicker to do :perldo s/foo/bar/ rather than remember the vim regexp syntax.

Wow! Very nice. I've been using ViM for years now and hadn't clued to the :perl* commands. I think I may have tried :perl or :perldo in an early version of gvim for Win32 when Perl support had not been compiled in. It is in v6.3 . Very cool to have that level of power without having to shell oput to an external program. Thanks for the tip!

Re:How do you do a character literal?

[nuin]

Or enter a macro which includes inserts I need to esc from?

You mean qaisome txet here<ESC>bbcwtext<ESC>q? You can exec this macro via @a.

Re:How do you do a character literal?

[Ralp]

there is no editor more powerful than vi(m). The proof is that vi can be used to emulate a turing machine.

That's nothing. In emacs you can just type Ctrl-Meta-x busy-beaver and it will solve the Halting Problem.

I thought Vim was a finished project

[ravee]

I have been a ardent fan of this editor and have been using it consistently for over 3 years now. And I really feel that vim has reached a maturity level where no more development is necessary.
And if it lacks a feature, just write a plugin for the same. If you ask me this is how softwares must be developed - in a fully modular manner.

Kudos to vim developers :)

Re:I thought Vim was a finished project

[m50d]

And if it lacks a feature, just write a plugin for the same. If you ask me this is how softwares must be developed - in a fully modular manner.

No, no, no. If the program is missing a feature, you add the feature to the program. Plugins are nice but should never be an excuse to be missing features.

In a related story...

[flazz]

a new version of emacs will never be released

VIM?

[thomble]

...puh-lease. I write everything in machine code.

ChangeLog?

[miknight]

Does there exist a formal list of bugs that were actually fixed for vim? I've never been able to find one :S

Yipee!

[callipygian-showsyst]

I am a VIM (and vi) fanatic! Which people find strange, because I'm also a Windows Zealot! I have the GUI version of VIM installed on every Windows machine I use, and I even have a version of Visual Studio that substitutes VIM as the editor.

The problem is I learned vi so long ago (back in the late 70s when Bill Joy released it), that I simply can't learn anything else. Of course, growing up on TICO and other editors before vi made moving to vi natural.

I have tried many, many times to switch to emacs and always fail. I'm just too old and too stuck in my ways to switch.

Re:Yipee!

[Anonymous Coward]

I find that really cool, that you are a Windows zealot (as am I), and yet you still seem to find happy medium where OSS and closed source software work together in harmony. This is how I believe all software should be.

Re:Yipee!

[p2sam]

I started using Emacs in 2nd year university, but switched to Vim after realizing that I don't want to learn elisp. :) I also think I'm too old to change now, I'm 25. ;-)

Re:Yipee!

[commodoresloat]

I am a VIM (and vi) fanatic! Which people find strange, because I'm also a Windows Zealot!

I bet you're loads of fun at parties!

Re:Yipee!

[chthon]

You should be modded funny. I am 39, I have used vi(m) for almost 6 years, and now I am learning emacs. I like them both.

I find the opening of files and switching between buffers easier on emacs.

Also, when I do a compile on Emacs with 'perl -c' I can automatically go to the errors in the Perl code. In vim, I had to enter manually the regular expressions for matching those.

I do not know with what I am going to end up in the long run. vim is faster for editing config files, emacs makes it easier on long running editing sessions.

Re:Yipee!

[morbuz]

Also, when I do a compile on Emacs with 'perl -c' I can automatically go to the errors in the Perl code. In vim, I had to enter manually the regular expressions for matching those.

Vim can do that too, for almost any programming language. :compiler perl :make

Re:Yipee!

[metamatic]

I find the opening of files and switching between buffers easier on emacs.

One of the vim tips on the vim web site details how to set up those otherwise useless function keys on your keyboard to switch between buffers. It doesn't get much easier than that. I also saw a tip on how to map a key to "split window, open file".

Re:Yipee!

[istartedi]

Just more proof that "the easiest interface to use is the one you already know".

Re:Yipee!

[arose]

It doesn't get much easier than that.

Have you tried iswitchb?

Need release faster

[2Bits]

Look, as good as vim could be, at this rate, you are not going to catch up with emacs, which is already at version 21.x or something. Which just proved that emacs is much better. If you don't believe, here is some proofs:

1- Emacs has a much higher version number, which proves to be a more mature software, which proves to be better (more mature is better)

2- Even an icon such as RMS whom has been proved to be more intelligent than the average USians, uses Emacs. This shows that smart people always make the right choice, and in reverse, proves that Emacs is better than Vim.

3- Everyone in Cryptonomicon, which is the bibile of all geeks, uses Emacs. We even have a module for encryption. It would take a long time for Vim to catch up to that kind of functionalities.

4- Only in Emacs can you do Ctrl-A to move the beginning of a line. In one shot. How could you do that in
Vim? You have to Esc, then press 0, which is lame. Which just shows how advanced Emacs is in terms of maturity and functionality.

5- As the theorem goes, computer science is a science for minimizing keystrokes. Emacs, in contrast to Vim, can prove this theorem right. Emacs users press less keys than Vim users.

6- Humans have 10 fingers (some may have more, but I don't know how to grow them), and Emacs allows you to use all your fingers at one. Which shows you that Emacs has a better human user interface. In contrast, Vim users can only type one key at a time, which has no concept of fingers. That is like an interface for dogs, which can only press one key at a time with their paws.

7- Emacs allows users to stretch their fingers more, and finger exercise has been proved, again and again, scientifically, to help increase human intelligence. The more you use Emacs, the more you become intelligent. Unlike Vim users, who become dumber and dumber, and end up with paws.

8- Everyone knows that geeks do no exercise. But we Emacs users have our daily dose of finger exercise. As a result, Emacs users have better shape. Take a look at the comparison: RMS (Emacs user) vs ESR (Vi user). RMS definitely looks better, with a nicer beard too. ESR can only have a lousy Asterix moustache. And look at what these two persons said in public, which just proved points 2, 6, and 7.

9- Look at this deductive proof I'm giving right now. Only an Emacs user can attain this level of intellect.

10- As a result of the last 9 points, this proves that Emacs is better. And from an evolutionary point of view, Emacs is like modern humans, and Vim like chimpanzee.

* putting on flame suite *

Re:Need release faster

[forkazoo]

You omit one important point from your otherwise well reasoned logic...

vi users are mammals, and they flip out and kill people *all the time.* Some guy dropped a spoon and a vi user edited a whole source tree. That's what I call a Real Ultimate Editor!

Wait, maybe I'm thinking of something else. Something to do with pirates...

Re:Need release faster

[MichaelSmith]

3- Everyone in Cryptonomicon, which is the bibile of all geeks, uses Emacs.

Except Alan Turing?

Re:Need release faster

[rk87]

This is not funny, but true...

Several years ago, I started using Emacs because a friend was using it. I was just being introduced to Linux, and Emacs was the editor he showed me. I got quite good with it, except that I would often find myself with wrist pain, mostly because of things like saving and quitting. I then found myself on another friend's Linux box who didn't have Emacs, and I asked what to use for editing, and he said vi. So, when I got home, I loaded up vimtutorial and went through to learn it. This has had me hooked. For one, I don't get any wrist pain anymore even after hours of typing away. Also, I found its faster for me. For example, save and quit in vi is :wq which is four keys - esc, shift+:, w, q, which are done with alternate fingers! Thanks vi!

Re:Need release faster

[csirac]

For save and exit, you can use:

ZZ

OR
 
:x

Note on "ZZ": there's no need for semi-colon, yes it's upper-case but you'll notice the shift key is pretty close the Z key.

Vim isn't perfect, but as with most things worth learning, if you get over the initial learning curve it can be rewardingly productive.

Re:Need release faster

[WWWWolf]

1- Emacs has a much higher version number, which proves to be a more mature software, which proves to be better (more mature is better)

Actually, Emacs is still at version 1.21.x. They just dropped the first "1." when they released it to the public, for the sake of convenience.

But in general, version numbers are pretty damn useless anyway.

(Disclaimer: I'm an XEmacs fan who also uses quite a bit of Vim and also trying to use Eclipse =)

Re:Need release faster

[GnuVince]

Actually, ESR is a GNU Emacs power-user. He's written GUD (Grand Unified Debugger) and VC (Version Control) for Emacs. He's been using it since... well, forever basically.

Re:Need release faster

[corngrower]

Vim users can only type one key at a time, Not true. Vim users often need to use the control key along with another key. You should modify this argument so that it states vim users use at most two fingers at a time. I haven't used emacs much so I can't comment on how many keys emacs users can use at once. But if it's more than two, yes they'ld certainly be more productive.

Re:Need release faster

[rumcho]

Your points are stupid.
R.S.

If you're a loyal Vim user...

[fm6]

... don't forget that it's charityware.

Maybe it is not interesting...

[Pecisk]

When I first saw vi, I thought - WTF. It is suitable for text editing!? Vi, for my point of view, is one of underdogs of software world. And yes, it really truely shines when we talk about remotently editing 40K file over 2800 baud modem or even on system with space about...emm...four megabytes? :)

Yes, there are Word, OO.o Writer, Gedit, Kedit, Pico, Nano, whatever...and there is vi. Freedom of choice does strange things, doesn't it?

Re:Maybe it is not interesting...

[lahvak]

Yeah, I remember my first encounter with vi. At that time, I was doing a lot of programming on DOS, and I used the Borland IDE all the time - turbo pascal, turbo c++, turbo prolog etc. Then I got a job where I had to use Unix, and the only editor that seemed to be installed was this thing called vi, everybody around was using it, so I gave it a try. My reaction was something like "what kind of sadistic moron created this thing? And how come everybody is using this, isn't there anything better?" I ended up doing most of my editting at home on my DOS machine, and bringing a floppy disk to work, and using dos2unix and unix2dos a lot.

Later I started to work on Solaris, quickly learned Emacs, and used that for few years, got tired of the size and complexity of the beast, switch ed to JED (also to get syntax highlighting, which Emacs didn't do at that time). Then I heard lot of people talking about Vim, how great it is, how fast and efficient you can be when you use it, etc, so I decided to sit down and spend few days learning it, no matter how bad and hard it seemd at the beginning. That was probably the best invested time I have ever spent in front of a computer. It took me about a week to completely switch to Vim and become a Vim fanatic (I must admit that playing a lot of Nethack helped, too). Now Vim is the first thing I install when using a new computer, and I do almost all my editting in Vim.

Re:Maybe it is not interesting...

[adrianmonk]

And yes, it really truely shines when we talk about remotently editing 40K file over 2800 baud modem

Hmm, well, 2800 baud modem is a bit slow, but at least you can feel good that your modem was 16.6% faster than the one I had...

Re:Maybe it is not interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

And yes, it really truely shines when we talk about remotently editing 40K file over 2800 baud modem

Actually, isn't that when one would use ed?

Re:Maybe it is not interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're confusing text editors with word processors.

Re:Maybe it is not interesting...

[adrianmonk]

And yes, it really truely shines when we talk about remotently editing 40K file over 2800 baud modem

Actually, isn't that when one would use ed?

It's not necessary to use ed in such a situation. vi is already fairly efficient with screen updates (although perhaps not as efficient as emacs in certain cases, if I recall correctly from 15 years ago...).

vi even has a special mode for low baud rates. If you're on a machine with a genuine copy of vi, try doing a stty 300 (which registers a baud rate of 300 with the terminal) sometime, then run vi /etc/passwd or similar. You'll notice that it doesn't even draw an entire screen worth of text, because that would take way too long at 300 baud, even if your terminal is only 25 lines or something.

As it turns out, vi automatically does a :set window with a small number if it notices that your terminal is connected at a low baud rate. This determines how many lines of your file are actually drawn if the whole screen appears to need to be redrawn. Saves a lot of time when editing files at 1200 baud.

For what it's worth, there's an interesting article over at The Register where they ask Bill Joy about the creation of vi, and it seems that he wrote the editor specifically with the goal of making it usable at 300 baud in mind. Because, of course, all he had at the time was a 300 baud modem.

Re:Lots of bug fixes

[ploss]

But only if you use Gentoo :)

Re:Lots of bug fixes

[Cheapy]

I can't help but wonder why this post got modded Off Topic...

I Love Vim

[Anonymous Coward]

I just have to say that. For the enjoyment of other Vim fans, here are a few maps I created to ease writing and quitting:


# write the file with alt-w
map <silent> <M-w> :w<CR>
imap <silent> <M-w> <ESC><M-w>a

# quit the file with alt-q
map <silent> <M-q> :q<CR>
imap <silent> <M-q> <ESC><M-q>

change log

[m()p3s]

The change log;
----------------
This section is about improvements made between version 6.3 and 6.4.

This is a bug-fix release. There are also a few new features. The major number of new items is in the runtime files and translations.

The big MS-Windows version now uses:
Ruby version 1.8.3
Perl version 5.8.7
Python version 2.4.2

Changed *changed-6.4*
-------

Removed runtime/tools/tcltags, Exuberant ctags does it better.

Added *added-6.4*
-----
Alsaconf syntax file (Nikolai Weibull)
Eruby syntax, indent, compiler and ftplugin file (Doug Kearns)
Esterel syntax file (Maurizio Tranchero)
Mathematica indent file (Steve Layland)
Netrc syntax file (Nikolai Weibull)
PHP compiler file (Doug Kearns)
Pascal indent file (Neil Carter)
Prescribe syntax file (Klaus Muth)
Rubyunit conpiler file (Doug Kearns)
SMTPrc syntax file (Kornel Kielczewski)
Sudoers syntax file (Nikolai Weibull)
TPP syntax file (Gerfried Fuchs)
VHDL ftplugin file (R. Shankar)
Verilog-AMS syntax file (S. Myles Prather)

Bulgarian keymap (Alberto Mardegan)
Canadian keymap (Eric Joanis)

Hungarian menu translations in UTF-8 (Kantra Gergely)
Ukrainian menu translations (Bohdan Vlasyuk)

Irish message translations (Kevin Patrick Scannell)

Configure also checks for tclsh8.4.

Fixed *fixed-6.4*
-----
"dFxd;" deleted the character under the cursor, "d;" didn't remember the exclusiveness of the motion.

When using "set laststatus=2 cmdheight=2" in the .gvimrc you may only get one line for the cmdline. (Christian Robinson) Invoke command_height() after the GUI has started up.

Gcc would warn "dereferencing type-punned pointer will break strict -aliasing rules". Avoid using typecasts for variable pointers.

Gcc 3.x interprets the -MM argument differently. Change "-I /path" to "-isystem /path" for "make depend".

Patch 6.3.001
Problem: ":browse split" gives the file selection dialog twice. (Gordon Bazeley) Same problem for ":browse diffpatch".
Solution: Reset cmdmod.browse before calling do_ecmd().
Files: src/diff.c, src/ex_docmd.c

Patch 6.3.002
Problem: When using translated help files with non-ASCII latin1 characters in the first line the utf-8 detection is wrong.
Solution: Properly detect utf-8 characters. When a mix of encodings is detected continue with the next language and avoid a "no matches" error because of "got_int" being set. Add the directory name to the error message for a duplicate tag. Files: src/ex_cmds.c

Patch 6.3.003
Problem: Crash when using a console dialog and the first choice does not have a default button. (Darin Ohashi)
Solution: Allocate two more characters for the [] around the character for the default choice.
Files: src/message.c

Patch 6.3.004
Problem: When searching for a long string (140 chars in a 80 column terminal) get three hit-enter prompts. (Robert Webb)
Solution: Avoid the hit-enter prompt when giving the message for wrapping around the end of the buffer. Don't give that message again when the string was not found.
Files: src/message.c, src/search.c

Patch 6.3.005
Problem: Crash when searching for a pattern with a character offset and starting in a closed fold. (Frank Butler)
Solution: Check for the column to be past the end of the line. Al

Get rid of the default _vimrc

[matvei]

I've replaced my Windows gvim's _vimrc with my hand-written .vimrc that I use everywhere I have a shell account, and I haven't noticed the behaviour you described. I'm quite sure that the default _vimrc sets an option that does that.

One of the new features

[Anonymous Coward]

listed in the CHANGELOG, the bug where children in Nairobi in starving has been fixed. So, there's no more hunger or starvation there. GO TEAM VIM!!

Re:A Year?

[Fujisawa Sensei]

Have been using Vim for more than 10 years now. This whole '"open "source thing' as you call it seems to be working much better for than the closed source alternatives. I have used vim under Windows, Linux, Solaris, Amiga OS, and NetBSD. Yup its working.

YOU ****ING EMACS-USING MORON!!!!11one1

[mrchaotica]

* putting on flame suite *

It's suit, not "suite". Jeez, you'd think that if you were smart enough to use Emacs, that you'd be smart enough to realize that running a spell checker is not sufficient proofreading! : P

[betcha thought this was an anti-Emacs flame, didn't you? Ha ha!!]

Re:YOU ****ING EMACS-USING MORON!!!!11one1

[Javaman59]

Troll? or meta-troll? I thought it was funny. The guy has a sharp eye (and the moderator could use a sense of humour)

Exciting...

[whichpaul]

So does this mean it's now worth changing over from notepad?
:P

Re:Lots of bug fixes

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignorance is bliss huh?

emacs and vim are too difficult to use

[MichaelSmith]

Neither of these two editors works like the sort of editor which people are exposed to these days. Why do you have to have an insert mode? This "feature" came from vi but for me it is exactly like bolting primitive editing behaviors on to more or less

In my day job as a senior programmer I introduce new staff to nedit. I also tell them to make their own choices about the tools they use. Most continue to use nedit because it has a few simple features which enhance usability. For example each function has a menu item, and each menu item tells you which key to use as an alternate way to reach the function. You don't have to worry about which mode it is in. Simple standard actions like opening and closing a file work in exactly the same way as other editors like gedit.

So for me people use vi(m) and emacs out of habit. Unless these tools improve they have no serious future in competition with eclipse, etc. Neither does nedit, for that matter but it will at least provide a better option for people new to *nix.

Re:emacs and vim are too difficult to use

[Anonymous Coward]

Well emacs is modeless, while vi is a mode based editor. They both have their advantages and disadvantages depending on the type of typist you are and your system needs (edit on every single damn computer with some ability or just a few). To make emacs like many other windows like text editors, I think you just have to add a a few key stroke aliases. Like C-(arrow) to move left and right by word and up and down by sentance (or paragaph), some mouse behaviours and a few windows shortcuts like (C-v for pase, C-c for copy, etc).

Re:emacs and vim are too difficult to use

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, Eclipse Is The New Emacs (EITNE) .. except I'd MUCH rather program in Lisp than Java. I'd imagine some of the stuff I do in my .emacs in 5-10 lines would takes PAGES of Java code to implement.

I use Emacs and VIM equally these days and the other editors just make me chuckle. "okay, whatever".

Re:emacs and vim are too difficult to use

[thaig]

Many people have predicted the death of Vi and emacs . . . they are now old.

I have used many editors, starting with Turbo Pascal 3.0's Wordstar-like one and including most of the windows editors out there now. Even though I was familiar with them first I was still "hooked" by Vim. Probable causes of this loyalty are:
* It's independence:
** it's useful for any editing task not just writing Java or C++
** some version can be found on the biggest systems or the smallest
** it can be used graphically or over a telnet-session
** one can find it on many platforms
* Regular expression search-and-replace
* Ability to repeat commands a number of times by prefixing them with a number

Cheers,

Tim

Re:emacs and vim are too difficult to use

[sashang]

I ended up using Vim but it wasn't out of habit. I wanted to learn the Linux environment and was a hardcore Windows user for years previously. I'd written programs using the Win32 API and Symantec 7.5 (back in 1997 when Symantec produced a C++ compiler). I moved to VC++ 6 then 7.1 a few years later. By this time I was using primarily keyboard shortcuts within the IDE to edit code and hardly ever used the mouse unless laying out a GUI. Then in 2003 I decided to install Linux and give it a go. I went for one of the more 'advanced' distro's (Gentoo) and tried various editors (NEdit, Vim, emacs). I was frustrated and liked nothing. So I decided to through myself in the proverbial deep end and started using Vim. I use h,j,k,l to move around and now am fairly proficient with it (e.g. I know 6 or more ways to go into insert mode). I haven't looked back and have not needed to change editors. I guess my point is it was not out of habit that I started using Vim. It was more out of a sense of frustration with the editors on Linux and a desire to punish myself with something difficult so that at the end of the day I might come out stronger.

Re:emacs and vim are too difficult to use

[Jorrit]

I use 'vi' (actually 'vim') EXACTLY because of the insert mode versus command mode. Because having such modes allows vi to have very short commands that (most of the time) don't even require a modifier key. i.e. with only two key presses I can delete the current line ('dd'). With one keypress I can paste it elsewhere ('p'). And so on. That's what makes vi so efficient if you are prepared to learn all the keys.

Greetings,

Re:emacs and vim are too difficult to use

[oneandoneis2]

Why do you have to have an insert mode? This "feature" came from vi but for me it is exactly like bolting primitive editing behaviors on to more or less

Try this: Go into Microsoft Windows, press the "Alt" button once, and then try to type Hello, world.

Funnily enough, instead of the key presses resulting in text going into the document, it'll navigate the menus. Why? Because it's just gone from Insert mode to a Command mode. It's exactly the same principle as Vi - sometimes you want key presses to result in text on the screen, and sometimes you want it to do something. It's not "primitive editing behaviour", it's exactly the same behaviour as is used in the most advanced word processors available. (And MS Word as well ;o) It's just not a visible, GUI-based Command mode in vi, is all.

So for me people use vi(m) and emacs out of habit.

I don't - I came to Linux a few years ago, needed a text editor, tried a few and settled on vi. Well, vim actually. It's a really good text editor once you learn it.

Re:emacs and vim are too difficult to use

[Rakshasa Taisab]

Emacs is not too difficult to use, it's actually really easy. I never think about what keys i need to press to do something, it happens automatically. Jump around the text, yank a few lines, write abit, yank another line, switch file and past the first yank. The speed at which a skilled emacs user can do this is astounding to mere mortals.

If you are a programmer; choose your editor wisely, it's what you'll spend most of the rest of your life using.

Re:emacs and vim are too difficult to use

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, command mode is needed. I just wish it wasn't the default mode when you start vim. Atleast it would be nice to put -- COMMAND -- on the screen like it puts -- INSERT --.

Re:emacs and vim are too difficult to use

[advocate_one]

In my day job as a senior programmer I introduce new staff to nedit. I also tell them to make their own choices about the tools they use.

Bzzzttt!! wrong... you should start them out on Edlin... (surprisingly it's available in XP of all things) they'll happily take anything you give them after that...

Re:emacs and vim are too difficult to use

[hackstraw]

they have no serious future in competition with eclipse

Does eclipse either start up or open a file from a terminal using ssh instantaneously?

Until it does, it has no competition for emacs or vi(m).

Re:emacs and vim are too difficult to use

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to call you nuts, but when I got thinking about it I decided you may have a point. My needs in an editor are regular expression find & replace that allow you to save and reuse substrings (like "s/\(.*\)Blah/\1/g"), a way to run a command on every line (like :g/^$/d), and a macro language. There are probably editors around that meet all 3 of those requirements that are easier to use than vi, but I use vi anyway.

Then again, I already know vi and it exceeds my needs in every way so why should I change?

So yeah, we probably use vi out of habit, but why is that necessarily a bad thing?

Re:emacs and vim are too difficult to use

[digitect]

Vim can act like a single-mode text editor: Cream for Vim. Tons of other usability improvements, too.

gdb integration

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone try the numerous plugins touting integration with gdb? Which one is the best? I know the debugging support hooks are there, because it works really well with sun workshop and dbx.

bugfix release

[Penguinoflight]

This release is strictly to fix bugs because no doubt a lot of people think like you. Eventually the 20 extra plugins that you didn't think were necessary in the main build will all be a pain to install manually, so someone will package them into one "ultimate" release. Well maybe not considering we're talking about programming software and the honor of maintaining your own distribution is strong, but in general companies are usually better served to release new versions to introduce new features while maintaining the older versions.

Have fun with your VIM, my professor is on the Emacs police squad so I'm happy to use that for now :)

Vim can't do exorcisms...

[csirac]

~
:help the damned
~
E149: Sorry, no help for the damned                           0,0-1         All

:-(

Re:Vim can't do exorcisms...

[Anonymous Coward]

At least it's a polite and correct answer.

A vim library?

[aCapitalist]

Has anyone ever attempted to make vim into a library? It seems that if that was done then it would be a lot easier to write various GUI front ends. It seems to me, that a vim library library would be the model of MVC, and other people could write the controller and View, sending commands to the library.

Re:A vim library?

[sashang]

yes. http://www.yzis.org/

Re:A vim library?

[klap]

that's exactly what we are doing with Yzis ;)
we have a core library that manages the whole 'editing' aspect, syntax highlight, plugins, language bindings, configuration .... , and GUIs 'clients' that just sends inputs and displays outputs.
for now we have a KDE kpart (for kdevelop for example), a KDE app, a ncurses (console mode) and a Qt-only GUIs (will be used for windows and Mac OS X).
we have started a GTKmm based one but we are lacking people knowing gtk well to complete it.
windows port (and Mac OS X) is on the way and should be avail quite soon.

we are growing slowly but we should be able to release a stable initial release within a year.

any help is welcome :)

Mik, Yzis developer

Re:Vim still not as good as Notepad

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not try out something between Notepad and Vim, see http://freshmeat.net/projects/wyoeditor/. BTW wyoEditor is cross-platform and can be used on Windows, Linux and MacOSX.

Re:Bugggg fix only. nice

[m50d]

No no no. The features are being added in the 7.x branch, which you can get from CVS. 6.x is purely for maintenance (ie bugfixes). This is a mixed blessing... It means 6.x is extremely stable, but if you want new goodies like spellchecking and intelligent autocompletion, you have to switch to the CVS only branch.

For a piece of basic system software, it's more important that there's a stable branch that's actually stable. Now if only Linus would see things this way.

Just wanted to say thanks as the rest of the world

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wanted to say thanks as the rest of the world !

Goddam there is no justice in this world since you don't get the Nobel price.

vi vs emacs? Love 'em both!

[Hosiah]

Even though Emacs is my chosen "home" editor (to the point that I know eLisp, even), when trying out a new distro (usually a live CD), I don't mind visiting vi. vi is impressive for the performance/size ratio, and has saved my butt for always being there to run from the command line when X won't start and I need to fix configuration files. It has also become my chosen "quickie" editor, just using the ed-type keys, for those two-liner shell scripts you dash off on the fly. So I find *both* editors have their seperate merits, with vi being slim and efficient, and emacs being padded and luxurious. And both have the most arcane keyboard syntax known to man, where every time you hit a wrong key, you cringe because you know it was *some* command to do *something*, and you're almost afraid to look at the screen and find out what it is...

Re:vi vs emacs? Love 'em both!

[krischik]

But we are talking vim here - which has a lot more features then plain vi.

Martin

vim with font formatting

[kishore.avv]

how about a font and formatting mode for vim ... develop and write docs at the same time ... ?

Re:vim with font formatting

[Lord Bitman]

** Whacks kishore.avv with a newspaper

No.

** Whacks kishore.avv with a newspaper

No.

nvi

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe this is not the right forum to ask such questions,
but, anyway:

is there some option to make the 'u' visual command work
like in nvi ?

"u.." is inprint in my muscle memory, so I avoid using
vim as much as possible: unfortunately, nvi has no
support for UTF-8, which is quite important for me.

(I don't care about syntax highlighting, spell-checking, etc)

oh my

[FudRucker]

i use mcedit you insensitive clod!

Why not at least *try* for intuitiveness?

[DeafByBeheading]

Sure, any non-GUI editor will have an obscure key sequence to exit, but I think that C-x (as in nano, for example) is more intuitive than :wZZ or whatever. I'm also put off by how vim decides that if something is more than one and a half keys outside of home row, it's useless. I was raised on Windows, for better of for worse, but I did learn the useful windows editor shortcuts. Home, end, C-home/end, page up, page down, the arrow keys, C-left/right, C-shift-left/right, shift-up/down, C-x/c/v... Personally I find that typing is not the rate-limiting step in my coding, and I'd gladly give up a bit of efficiency for a sensible interface. I understand that others may feel differently, but I find it hard to be taken with an editor that seems to have setting editing speed records as a key goal... Even the menu bar thing--sure, the extra display real estate helped back in the twenties when you had monitors with maximum resolutions of 32x24 that could only display three lines at once or something, and sure, something like Eclipse goes overboard (although you can maximize views), but now (and I'm still on 1024x768)? I can see the usefulness in learning enough vim to get by because it's ubiquitous, but the uber-efficient approach (and especially having it set up that way by default)... Meh...

I'm sure people will tell me to go back to Notepad or whatever, but I'm just saying that there *are* ways to do an efficient, powerful editor that *doesn't* sacrifice an intuitive interface (and no, I don't think Notepad is it).

Re:Why not at least *try* for intuitiveness?

[saranagati]

You're insulting vim for lacking the one thing it excels in over most other editors, the cursor positioning. Have you tried in vim command mode, the key sequence, 11 up, that will move your cursor up 11 lines, or 5x will the following 5 characters. 3dd will delete the next 3 lines, cw will delete the current word up to the first non alpha numeric character and put you into input mode. cW will do the same except it deletes up to the first space, 3cW will delete 3 words. c$ will delete the rest of the line, c^ will delete everything on the line behind the current cursor position. Theres lots of other great tricks to vim that will save you a lot more time than reaching for your mouse to scroll around. As for your page up/down, home end etc. issue, those are just some vim settings. I have a .vimrc file that I copy to all my machines so I can have the use of the full keyboard.

Re:Why not at least *try* for intuitiveness?

[saranagati]

:%s/excels/accels/g

Re:Why not at least *try* for intuitiveness?

[MonoSynth]

I think the Vi(m) keystrokes *are* pretty intuitive:

:wq : Write-Quit
:w : Write
x : erase char
[num]dd : Delete line(s) <-- multiple keystrokes for destructive action!
[num]G : Goto line
n : Next
p : Previous
w : next Word
b : (prev word) : Back
i : Insert
a : Append
o : Open line
:s : Substitute
dw : Delete Word

and so on, and so forth.... But from a GUI-viewpoint only a GUI has good usability. A GUI is nice for intuitiveness, but won't ever get you to the speed of an editor that's completely controllable with your keyboard.

Of course some keystrokes are obscure (h,j,k,l for cursor movement), but you use them so often that it's easier to have keys that are next to each other than (say) 'u' (up), 'd' (down), 'l' (left), 'r'(right). But hey, you *can* use the arrow keys in gvim!

But Vim isn't alone. Most games use obscure keystrokes too.

Re:Why not at least *try* for intuitiveness?

[imsabbel]

I think whenever deleting xxx lines, or xxx words, counting how much you want to delete and doublechecking that you dont kill anything you want to keep will make those timesavings insignificant, right?

Re:Why not at least *try* for intuitiveness?

[dccontractor]

if you're nervous about accidentally deleting more than you wanted to, you can use the visual mode. Thus v3wd instead of d3w will let you visually confirm your selection before deleting the next 3 words for example.

Re:Why not at least *try* for intuitiveness?

[jez9999]

I've got an idea, and it's just crazy enough to work. Why not try and combine the two, creating a text editor that's a GUI, inserts text when keys are pressed by default, yet IS completely controllable from the keyboard? Start with Notepad, then add tons of functionality whilst keeping the fundamental idea (a n00b can edit a simple text file) the same? I think it's alrady been done with some of the more advanced Windows text editors.

Sure, you can only use ctrl-xyz combinations for app control because regular characters insert/replace text by default, but I think that's a helluva lot more intuative than Vim.

Re:Why not at least *try* for intuitiveness?

[saranagati]

you can also use marks to delete lines. in command mode, go to the line you want to start at, hit ma to mark a line as "a", then go to the last line and hit d'a to delete (delete to mark a). This will delete the block of text from mark a to delete mark a.

Vim source code

[chrysalis]

int main(void)
{
for(;;) {
get_keystroke();
bell();
flash_screen();
}
return 0; /* NOTREACHED */
}

Re:Vim source code

[Anonymous Coward]

DINGG!!! attempt to delete minibuffer while in minibuffer

Re:Vim source code

[cloudreader]

As always its really amusing and it is a good time pass to read a flamewar thread between vim and emacs. Its intresting to see the things people come up with to justify their editor and to undermine the other.

Nobel price NOW !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobel price NOW !!!

Save...

[TangoCharlie]

Agreed!

vi is in this respect _ALMOST_ as bad as emacs! I ask you, XS for save. What where they thinking?! Gee gads! That's almost as bad as Notepad's F S. Notepad's even worse because it has TWO key sequences for save... the F S which I've already mentioned, and S. Now, that's confusing!

Bring back edlin!! (I can't remember how you saved files in that.....)

Convert CSV files with vim & awk

[mattcasters]

You can use ! to process a CSV file by calling external commands like awk:
for example:

:1,$ !awk -F';' '{ printf("%s %s %s %s\n",$1,$2,$3,$4); }'

Cheers,

Matt

From a newer Linux user's POV

[Flamekebab]

I know the geek community generally swears by vim and emacs, but to newer users they're both a closed book. Any search for understanding and explanation is met by what appears to be insanely complex reasoning..

These are text editors, right? Or what? What is their purpose?
Why are they so complicated to use?

I mean, I would have thought the more advanced features would be complicated. But plain vanilla text-editing..? It seems you need to press obscure commands just to be able to scroll through a file, let alone edit it.

I think it's things like this that puts many newer Linux users off configuring things themselves, as having to deal with programs such as vim and emacs is more than a little daunting.

Re:From a newer Linux user's POV

[FishandChips]

You have a strong point. But even if you never need vi/vim or emacs it is still a really good idea to have a text editor available on Linux that you can use from the console. You can use it to edit configuration files and, more important, you can use it if you suffer a foobar and lose your graphical display (x-server), for example. So in that sense, a basic text editor is rather like keeping a fire extinguisher around. You may only use it once a year but boy you will be glad you have one.

A very simple one is nano/pico. A good intermediate one (does more than nano/pico but a lot less than vim/emacs) is joe. Being able to use joe has got me out of fixes on quite a few occasions now.

Re:From a newer Linux user's POV

[Rxke]

to get a quick introduction into vim, type vimtutor

IMO better than reading the manpages....

spend awhile with it, and it's really elegant.

Re:From a newer Linux user's POV

[peterpi]

New users shouldn't be using vim.

This might sound like a really elitist thing to say, but if the thought of spending a day or so learning it puts people off vim, then they probably wouldn't get the benefits anyway. I edit code all day every day, so the week or so it took me to learn what I know has been paid back many times over. The rest of the linux world might be going for ease of learning in order to increase the userbase, but vim isn't.

There are plenty of more intuitive editors out there that are probably far more suited to their needs. Kate for KDE is quite nice. Vim is a niche power-user's tool that fills a particular gap.

Re:From a newer Linux user's POV

[Anonymous Coward]

vimtutor is fun. Maybe it should be listed on happypenguin.org.

Re:From a newer Linux user's POV

[revscat]

These are text editors, right? Or what? What is their purpose? Why are they so complicated to use?

Because they are advanced tools. If you are a developer or admin you spend much of your time editing text files, typically text files that are structured in some form. And since you're dealing with text files, you're hands are on the keyboard; moving to the mouse takes time.

I'm typing this message in vim. Why? Because I can edit better with it. If I wanted to change the third sentence back, I just hit esc-3-( and I'm there. Bottom of the document? esc-]-]. Top of the window? H. Bottom? L. Would a scroll bar do the same thing? Sure. But it takes more time. Yes, it takes time to learn vim, but it is worth it in the long run because you are able to work more efficiently.

Basically it's the same difference that is between any general vs. specific tool: they both are able to achieve more or less the same results, but one gets the job done and the other gets the job done efficiently.

long lines still slow?

[pete0t2]

did they fix the problem with very long lines?

I find vim chokes on files with no line breaks (e.g. unformatted XML where all the tags are on one line for).

I use vim all the time. I used it for my masters (both the thesis (latex) and the code I wrote). some of my favourite commands/plugins:

lines (you can set how many lines vim shows by default (good for .gvimrc)
latex suite (man, i don't even know how to use latex without it)
s/\(.*\)/blah \1 blah (who knew regex groups would be so useful)
qx macro q then @x (very good with repeat (.) multiple execution (e.g. 3@x)
% (match brackets - great for xml/html)

Re:long lines still slow?

[Lord Bitman]

I doubt the numerous problems with long lines will ever be fixed unless someone is willing to walk through the tangled web and fix vim's flaws, for only the pleasure of having these fixes rejected by purists.

Re:long lines still slow?

[vigilology]

did they fix the problem with very long lines?

It'll be more a problem with your terminal. Disabling syntax colouring should help (":syntax off").

gdb integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know if vim 7 will feature gdb integration? The only time I use emacs any more is for M-x gdb.

vi vs emacs

[Heembo]

My boss removed my ability to execute VI on all of the company servers to force me to use emacs. No foolin. I swear, I have to type so much more for simple commands, I miss the simplicity and elegance of VI. *sigh*

Re:vi vs emacs

[Anonymous Coward]

Use viper-mode. In time, you'll learn the features that emacs has (and vim does not) and never switch back.

Re:vi vs emacs

[rumcho]

just install vim in your home directory and you'll be set!

Re:vi vs emacs

[Heembo]

I really like keeping my job, thankyouverymuch! =) Tomato Tomatoe - I can get my job done with emacs - at least the checks clear! =)

Re:vi vs emacs

[rumcho]

If I had a boss who was going to such extremes to keep me away from an editor for no logical reason I would pack up my shit and leave. Such weird behavior is definitely disturbing to me and in this great job market I wouldn't think twice about staying away from weirdos like him/her.

Re:vi vs emacs

[Heembo]

Sorry man, I like getting paid very well while telecommuting from a remote tropical island. (zip code 96703, I lie to you not.) If VI is the sacrifice I must make to live this lifestyle that most would die for, then dammit, I'm an EMACS man now! Not a lot of Enterprise Java Jobs here that pay over 6 figs - it's a small island, man!

wrong.

[MonoSynth]

not ':wZZ', but ':wq' (write-quit) OR 'ZZ' (or ':x'). Three not-that-hard-to-learn commands.

Re:wrong.

[jZnat]

Right. Just hitting Esc if you're not in Normal mode followed by ZZ to save/quit is quite the useful sort of thing you'd expect from vim (or equivalent in emacs).

Re:wrong.

[pthisis]

just hitting Esc if you're not in Normal mode followed by ZZ to save/quit is quite the useful sort of thing you'd expect from vim (or equivalent in emacs)

Of course with a modern vim (last 5 years) you could:
1. Select save-exit from the menu.
2. Select save from the menu, then select exit from the menu.
3. Select "exit" from the menu, then respond yes to the "do you want to save your work" prompt
4. Any of the above, using Meta-F to access the file menu and hitting S for save, x for exit, or v for save-exit.

No need to hit escape before any of those options, either.

And if you can't remember the keystrokes...

[MonoSynth]

...download a Cheat Sheet and print it.

VI on Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

While working on a project on someone else's computer
I found myself installing WinVI (which I believe
is based off VIM). It helped edit the code
in ways no other Windows editor I've seen
could. I'm a big fan of VIM, even if
it does have a steep learning curve, and
I'm happy to see new releases chugging out.

I'd pay....

[archeopterix]

I just wanted to point out that Intellisense (context-sensitive completion based on parsing or "understanding" code) is the #1 most voted VIM feature.

I'd pay $2000 to any person who takes the I-word out of the language and shoots it in the head. I'd also pay the person who invented it (the word, not the feature) to shoot themselves in the head.

Very Irritating

[sl4shd0rk]

6.4 more reasons why.

Also, write code that can be understood.

[Poromenos1]

Autocompletion is not meant (at least as I perceive it) to help you remember the names of functions (although it's a big help there). It's meant to make you type the names faster, which can be a GODSEND if you use names like "intDocumentClassFontState" (overkill, but you get the meaning, and I know using prefixes in dynamically typed languages is wrong, but I like it). I want to be able to read my code when I look at it after having forgotten what it's about. Comments help, but they can only get you so far if your variable names are x, y, z.

Nedit and Jedit

[Qbertino]

As far as I'm concerned, Nedit and Jedit have replaced Vi and Emacs as the top two rivaling editors. Both are among the best editors available today. Check them out : http://www.nedit.org/ http://www.jedit.org./

Re:Nedit and Jedit

[Maltheus]

Haven't used nEdit in a very long time, but I fully agree with you on jEdit, it's plugin support is phenomenal. I use three levels of editors. IntelliJ for project files (Java, JSPs, etc), vim for quick small changes or just viewing, and jEdit for the rest. Like them all for different reasons. Don't much care about rivalry though.

User Friendly: Yes, Intuitive: No

[jellomizer]

There is a difference between User Friendly and Intuitive. VI is actually very user friendly because it is designed for maximum productivity in a text editor. Almost all the function keys are close by so you don't need to move you hand from home row position much. And there are a LOT of functions that other editors don't come close with, which are extremely useful, so once you learn how to use it is very user friendly. But for intuitive No it is not at all. I remember when I first tried VI I couldn't even type (I was in command mode by default) and I had to ctrl z and kill the processes to get out. VI is not Intuitive at all. There are other programs that are Intuitive and Not User friendly. While you instinctive know what to do in the app the the processes is just a big pain to follow, Like the old CD Burning software, before XP and OS X (Linux still sucks at it) where you had to run a separate program add your files and burn it. Vs. The newer way of just dropping the files like it was a normal drive then hit the burn button. Both processes are similar but the second method is more user friendly because you are not leaving the OS's Desktop document theme. A user friendly program is a program once you learn it you really like it, a Intuitive program is a program you know how to use without much of a learning curve.

Vim for Perl Developers

[Anonymous Coward]

This thread looks like a proper place for this link:

"Vim for Perl Developers"
http://mamchenkov.net/wordpress/2004/05/10/vim-for -perl-developers/

It might be of interest even if you use something other than Perl.

Last Of The Well Behaved Editors

[vigilology]

Sorry if this rant is misplaced, but I see this as not an insignificant problem amongst newer GUI editors today.

There seems to be a growing (or at least more and more visible) practise of editors (especially GUI editors) not including EOL at the end of every line. They treat it as a line separator, not a line terminator, resulting in no EOL at the end of the last line.

Because of this, they also display lines incorrectly. I have noticed it with the editors in ZDE, Eclipse, and Scite. It only serves to create confusion when they interpret an EOL as 'start a new line', and actually start to display another line as if it already existed. This is very visible if you create a 'proper' text file you'll have to use a well-behaved text editor like vim for this) and open it in one of the above editors. It will display an extra line below the real last line of the file. You see something like this:

1 first line
2 middle line
3 last line
4

There are actually three lines in the text file and you can confirm this with 'wc -l '.

There is a lot of confusion with people who don't understand the concept of EOL and what these editors are doing. For example, I have people at work who use ZDE and when they open a text file created by me (vim), they go bonkers because they think I've put an extra blank line at the bottom of my scripts. There have been problems in the past with people really putting unnecessary blank lines at the bottom of scripts, and of course this lead to premature headers errors. Naturally, they think I'm doing the same, because they don't realise that their editor is displaying the file incorrectly.

I have one colleague who even wrote into our 'coding guidelines' recommending people not use vim because "it puts in extra characters that you don't ask for".

I have noticed that Redhat's default emacs configuration (FC3 at least) also opens text files in binary mode by default, resulting in a missing EOL on the last line of a newly created text file.

I'd like to know if I have the wrong idea about anything, but the question remains: what is the reason for these editors behaving this way?

Re:Last Of The Well Behaved Editors

[TuataraShoes]

If I had the points, I'd mod you up. I'm not familiar with ZDE or Scite, but I work with data transferred between different companies with a variety of systems. We end up writing custom adapter scripts to correct this kind of data format. End of line and end of file characters and character sequences are not universally standard. But sometimes they are completely and uniquely querky.

I don't mind that so much. What winds me up is when they ask us to write export adaptor scripts to screw the data up again to their preferred screwed-format as we return files to them!

What a waste of time.

[jocknerd]

I read your entire argument only to find the you use Notepad? Oh my god, I've wasted two minutes of my life. Thanks.

Re:Bugggg fix only. nice

[jonadab]

You know, in all the *many* discussions I've read about vim over the years, one thing I've never heard is "Well, it has lots of features, but the problem is, it's so bloated and buggy!" Have you ever heard that criticism leveled at vim? Does it have a problem in that regard? If so, this is news to me.

I have, numerous times, asked vim afficianados, "Does it support foo, bar, and baz?" (where foo, bar, and baz are any three arbitrarily chosen advanced features I use on a regular basis in Emacs and would not want to live without), and the answer has NEVER been "Oh, yes, it does all three of those things." It's been a couple of years since the last time, so we can try this again: does it support automatic mode-dependent (i.e., sensitive to the type of file you're editing) grouping-symbol matching (wherein when you type a closing grouping symbol it highlights the opening one)? Does it support correct automatic rewrapping of nested quotations in email and usenet messages? Can it be customized so that when editing a certain type of file, inserting certain characters has additional effects?

It seems to me that a critical lack of important features is vim's one major shortcoming, and that's what development really ought to focus on. Bugs in vim? I've never heard of that being a serious problem.

Marketshare?

[walterbyrd]

I'm not sure if that applies to vi. I use vi, along with other editors, on both the windows side, and the linux side.

If you are just a point-n-click desktop user, not a developer, or admin, I suppose there is not much use for vi.

But, it is handy to know some vi, if you are working on NIX box with no GUI. I also use vi on old dos boxes.

IMO: vi is nice tool to have around. Although, it may not replace your favorite IDE or wordprocessor.

Re: Vi Modes Considered Harmful

[some guy I know]

No one says vim is user friendly. It's not supposed to be.

Actually, when vi was first released, it was very user-friendly, at least compared to the default editor ed, which is a line editor, and which was generally the only other text editor available on most UNIX systems.
(If you want to compare the two, type "ed <some file>" at the command prompt on most *IX systems (including cygwin under MS-Windows), and try to edit the file.
Vi(m) is so much better.)
Even when editing on a DECWriter (a hard-copy terminal popular back in ancient times), I preferred using ex, the one-dimensional version of vi, to using ed.

Vi has held up surprisingly well over the last couple of decades, and (g)vim's added capabilities have made it even better.
(I really like the '*' and '#' commands, and being able to use the mouse and arrow keys in insert mode.
Oh, split-screen mode.
Etc., etc.)
Vi has done a decent job making the transition from TTY to GUI.

The one thing that annoys me sometimes is when I accidentally try to use vi commands in a non-vi setting.
For example, more than once I have accidentally dismissed a dialog box after filling in a text box because I hit the escape key to terminate insert mode.

I disagree.

[Vorondil28]

Don't get me wrong, I fully understand that a GUI text editor is hella easier to learn, but I take issue with the statement, "I disagree that everyone should learn to use vi."
I suppose you're right that vi isn't for everyone, but from a sysadmin's (or even a power-user's) point of view, you'd be stupid to ignore vi. Say a system gets clobbered and your beloved pico (insert other simple text editors here) is shot. What's your boss going think when you tell him you can't fix it because you don't know vi? And it's not that difficult to learn. I decided I wanted to at least get acquainted with vi, so I started taking notes in my Perl class with it. Dorky? Yes, but after a week or two of that, I had basic editing skills down pat. Granted, I don't know vi inside-out, but if I needed to make an emergency edit to a .conf, I could. Being an avid *nix user, and not knowing at least a little vi is like being a Windows admin and not knowing your way around MMC.

little (paying) job for vim programmers

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a little (paying) job
for an experienced vim user and C programmer:

* Add pull-down menus to insert mode
    in the text console. They should look
    similar to those in gvim.

If interested, please post contact details
in comp.editors. However, you will only be paid
if and when your patch is officially incorporated
into vim.

hopefully not an idiotic vim/emacs comment

[beforewisdom]

Usually with these threads there is the temptation to make the "usual comments" regarding vi or emacs.

Interface is frequently mentioned.

If you look back to when these editors were "designed", they were "designed" for doing significant developement, on unix, in a pure shell enviornment.

There are still people who do significant development in a pure shell enviornment, but this sort of thing is in the minority these days.

Most command line editors in nix are primarily used these days to edit configuration files. There is no need for a complex and alien set of key bindings.

If all you truly need a command line editor for is editing config file you might be interested in "ne":

http://ne.dsi.unimi.it/

It has CUA ( windows, dos-like ) key bindings and it even has a DOS style drop down menu.

It is customizable, fully in the command line, and very, very small.

Re:hopefully not an idiotic vim/emacs comment

[krischik]

Both emacs and vim have a GUI as well now. I almost never start vim on a command line. But if I do it is helpfull to have the same key command available.

Martin

Re:hopefully not an idiotic vim/emacs comment

[beforewisdom]

I've tried both.

Both GUIs reek of a CLI interface legacy. Don't get me wrong, the CLI interface was good for the environment and limitations of that time, but compared against GUIs designed for a GUI age, they are not that great.

Those editors shine in the CLI, but most people ( there is always one or two ) do not do major development in a pure CLI environment any more.

There are more friendly, smaller CLI editors for tweaking config files and better GUI IDEs for development

Re:hopefully not an idiotic vim/emacs comment

[krischik]

I understand you point. But for real hard core coders there are more priorities then the GUI. I don't say I don't want a GUI - I want one. I won't use an editor without. But I also want:

- A GUI which I can configure.
- A script language (vim has 5: vim-script, perl python, ruby and tcl).
- Character, line and rectangle cut/copy/paste.
- A parser for compiler output - even when the compiler output is split over more then one line.
- fully configuable syntax higlight.
- Multi-OS Support.

Just what I remember out of the top of my head.

Martin

Re:hopefully not an idiotic vim/emacs comment

[beforewisdom]

There are GUI editors and IDEs with all of those things.

I think the reason why emacs and vi are still around is that the afforementioned GUI development tools usually are not free( or good)

Re:hopefully not an idiotic vim/emacs comment

[krischik]

Or not available for the legacy OS you have to work with.

Who else...

[griffjon]

parsed that title as vim: 64bit?

Why did this troll get modded as funny?

[lwriemen]

It's obvious that the poster is unfamiliar with vim, and only wishes to prove the superiority of his/her ignorance.

Here's a clue. Run gvim with the default settings.

Re:Why did this troll get modded as funny?

[falzer]

In case anyone doesn't know, my other post was a spoof on this post which has appeared in several discussions.

I happen to love VIM. I use it daily.

Re:Bugggg fix only. nice

[frodo from middle ea]

does it support automatic mode-dependent (i.e., sensitive to the type of file you're editing) grouping-symbol matching (wherein when you type a closing grouping symbol it highlights the opening one)?

matchit script. So yes it does.

Does it support correct automatic rewrapping of nested quotations in email and usenet messages?

I don't use text based email clients any more, but it should. The only thing suggested seems to be is to set textwidth=72 instead of default 80. As vim supports local settings (setting unique to a buffer). You can set the textwidth to 72 for mails only and have it as 80 for all other files.

Does it support correct automatic rewrapping of nested quotations in email and usenet messages? Can it be customized so that when editing a certain type of file, inserting certain characters has additional effects?

Yes it does. Filetype plugins plus abbreviation.

So in short yes it does support what you want. May be some one using mutt/pine + vim can elaborate on point 2.

GNU Moe

[hummassa]

the first line of the description already let me down:

GNU Moe is a powerful, 8-bit clean, text editor for ISO-8859 and ASCII character encodings. It has a modeless, user-friendly interface, online help, multiple windows, unlimited undo/redo capability, unlimited line length, global search/replace (on all buffers at once), block operations, automatic indentation, word wrapping, filename completion, directory browser, duplicate removal from prompt histories, delimiter matching, etc.

Why is UTF-8 out? I speak Portuguese natively, and my preferred encoding is not latin1 anymore (because with UTF8 a lot of stuff in Japonese can be cleanly in the same page as my Portuguese text, for instance). I also happen to like vim's modal interface.

Re:GNU Moe

[Ocrad]

Why is UTF-8 out? I speak Portuguese natively, and my preferred encoding is not latin1 anymore (because with UTF8 a lot of stuff in Japonese can be cleanly in the same page as my Portuguese text, for instance). I also happen to like vim's modal interface.

UTF-8 is out by design. If you need UTF-8, simply use another editor. The same can be said about modal interface.

When I asked "what Vim can do that Moe can't", I was refering to editor tasks, not charset encodings.

using the wasd keys to move around

[matt me]

>you use the wasd keys to move around
just like counter-strike then!

Re:vim with font formatting-It's there

[Anonymous Coward]

It has it - it's just in a seperate module. I believe it's called TeX - guy called Donald Knuth wrote it. Remember the one program, one task, rule.

Re: Vi Modes Considered Harmful

[kotj.mf]

The one thing that annoys me sometimes is when I accidentally try to use vi commands in a non-vi setting. For example, more than once I have accidentally dismissed a dialog box after filling in a text box because I hit the escape key to terminate insert mode.

You know you're fucked when you're typing a paper in MS Word, and reflexively hit :w every time you want to save.

vi vs the-rest

[nazsco]

> Java code in Eclipse, ONLY because of completion, even though all my other editing features from VIM aren't there (or are buried).

That sumarize well why i love vim.
Already tried eclipse, emacs, ultraEdit and even liked for some time jEdit

VI is why Linux is perceived as hard

[tjstork]

You tell a newbie to open up a configuration file to edit it, and the next thing you know, you get a litany of disasters because the editor itself is a pain.

Re:VI is why Linux is perceived as hard

[krischik]

Why I love vim myself I think you are right. There need to be something easier - like mcedit - as default editor for Linux.

When I did my first Linux installation X did not work out of the box and it had vi only. When I accidentily started vi I had to Ctrl-Alt-F2 and do a kill 1234 to get out of it again.

vim is a lot better here. vim has a help function. Actualy: the help function was the killer function which finally converted me love vim - long after years of deep honest hate for vi.

But then: now X almost allways works "out of the box" the problem is not that bad anymore - almost always a newbie can edit using X editor.

Martin

Re: Feature Creep in Vim

[some guy I know]

Then you might want to look at vim 7, which is where all the features are going. Spell checking, intelligent autocompletion, a hell of a lot of new tweaks that make vim even nicer to work with.

Ack.
One thing that I like about vim is its small size.
It's a shame that it is getting more and more bloated.
It seems that no software is immune to this.

Re: Vi Modes Considered Harmful

[Mad Marlin]

Vim rocks:
Control-P
It's like the IDDQD for typing.

Kind of rude, eh?

[hummassa]

1. You did not specify. You asked simply "what Vim can do that Moe can't".
2. For a text editor, being capable of editing multi-language files is an absolute imperative nowadays. Did you know .desktop files contain all the translations (English, Deutsch, Korean, Japanese etc) of the label of an application? Many people need to use an utf8-capable editor.
3. "Simply use another editor"? Come on, I tought you were asking for information and help (which I tried to provide here) but you seem to be only interested in advertising Moe.
4. I found your answer deeply disrespectful, and I was only trying to help.

Other answers to your question:

A. Vim can execute commands in python, perl, ruby, or tcl (whichever the user prefer) on a line or a block of your text -- no pipes involved (ie. fast).
B. Vim can display file differences in a visual sort of way.
C. Vim can read make's output and put you in the proper point of an error.
D. Besides the four scripting languages, vim has its own, quite powerful, configuration && macro language.
E. Vim has a small, bare-bones version too (vim-tiny).
F. Vim has all the advertised functionalities of Moe, even in the -tiny version -- and it can be used modeless, too (-easy option). AFAIK, there is not a lot of difference between the usage of the modeless option of vim and Notepad.
G. Syntax highlighting.
H. Smart indentation for C/C++, Perl, Java, and other languages.
I. Vim can read grep's output and put you in the place where you found your regex.
J. Many files, one screen.
K. If Moe don't have UTF8, I will safely suppose it doesn't have left-to-right text, too (arabic, hebrew, etc).

Is this enough for you? I hope at least A-J help you.

Re:Kind of rude, eh?

[Ocrad]

1. You did not specify. You asked simply "what Vim can do that Moe can't".

Yes, Sorry. I tend to be too concise because it costs me a lot to write in English.

2. For a text editor, being capable of editing multi-language files is an absolute imperative nowadays. Did you know .desktop files contain all the translations (English, Deutsch, Korean, Japanese etc) of the label of an application? Many people need to use an utf8-capable editor.

But many other people does not need UTF-8 most of the time, or even never. I am one of them. Also a smaller editor tends to have less bugs and fits better in rescue discs.

3. "Simply use another editor"? Come on, I tought you were asking for information and help (which I tried to provide here) but you seem to be only interested in advertising Moe.

This was a honest response. If my editor does not suit your needs because it is designed for other use, what do you expect my answer to be? "I'll work all the night to offer you the editor of your dreams in the morning"?

Moe's source is about 37 times smaller than Vim. I intend to make Moe a small, simple and reasonably complete editor, not a clone of Emacs.

4. I found your answer deeply disrespectful, and I was only trying to help.

I didn't intended to be disrespectful, and I appreciate your help. But I think we are speaking about two completely different types of editors.

Vim could easily be made more friendly

[Anonymous Coward]

The major problems I have with it is that the modes get in your way. It also confuses many people to use letters for common operations. This can easily be fixed without eliminating any features:

1. Get rid of modes and use control keys for special operations.

2. Use the standard, popular key combinations for the usual purposes, e.g.
      arrow keys to mov around, control left and right arrow to move one word
      to the left or right, Del to delete the character that the cursor is on,
      PgUp and PgDn to move up or down one page, and so on.

This makes it easier for newbies to pick up the fundamental operations. They
can then learn the more complex operations as they need them.

Another approach would be to use a GUI to ease newcomers into the editor. This would not hinder experts if there were "accelerator" keys (control key sequences) to perform the same tasks without having to go through the GUI.

If you want the program to be popular, make it easy for newbies and experts alike.

Re: Feature Creep in Vim

[keesh]

./configure --with-features=minimal --with-gui=none --disable-x11 && make && sudo make install

Or, in Gentoo, USE="minimal" emerge vim

All of Vim's features are optional. You can even do silly things like turning off support for everything except vt100 if you really want...

While you're at it ...

[blwrd]

... why don't just copy paste the source code too :P

gvim "server" -- when?

[MMHere]

I talked with Bram about this at OSCon a couple of years ago, so he's aware of the request -- and many people have made it.

When will gvim support "one server process, multiple windows?" I am not a fan of using multiple buffers, split in one window (except in certain situations like diff and vertical split).

I'd like to be able to have one vim process running that keeps a single editor context (remembering stuff like last search pattern, last ":" command, etc.), but lets me view one file per window, having more than one window/file open.

Additionally, I'd the ability to issue a vim command at the shell prompt which does: "open this file in a new window." Once that new window is up, it would connect with the single vim process, and have access to search/command history.
_____

I know I can do all of the above with emacs -- there's an emacs server concept and a command line that can be used to pop new windows. I choose, however, to use vim.

Re:gvim "server" -- when?

[MMHere]

P.S.: I know that there's already a gvim server concept: when you issue a command to open a new file it does so in an existing gvim window, but it "splits" that window first.

I don't care for this. I prefer to let the window manager manage windows (its purpose) and have the editor just do editing, not "window like" management.

Hints on how to improve?

[Anonymous Coward]

I use vim a fair deal, but find myself starting jEdit more and more often.

I regularly copy/paste, use regex and toggle into insert/overwrite modes. Only use arrow keys for navigating, or shift + aoi if i'm feeling really adventurous.. I also feel like my non-us keyboard is holding me back at times.

I figure I'd be more effective if i started using windows/buffers, but seems like such a chore to learn that I only ever work with one window at a time.

What i really miss though, is file handling/navigation. Especially having instant access to a full file tree, like in jEdit or any decent IDE.

Suggestions?

Re:Bugggg fix only. nice

[Kent Recal]

grouping-symbol matching (wherein when you type a closing grouping symbol it highlights the opening one)

yes. by default you jump to opening/closing bracket by pressing % and with a short script snippet you can add any
kind of highlighting you desire.

Does it support correct automatic rewrapping of nested quotations in email and usenet messages?

sure. i have this in my .vimrc, which wraps the current block when i hit w ...
map w gqap

it can also be done automagically (another 2 lines in your vimrc) but well, i don't like that.

Can it be customized so that when editing a certain type of file, inserting certain characters has additional effects?

yes. i'm not exactly sure why you'd want that (or what it is that you want) but you can add
just about any kind of behaviour limited or not limited to certain filetypes.

e.g. this one-liner will give you a closing curly brace whenever you enter an opening one and hit enter (or wait for a moment). conveniently it will not add the closing brace if you type anything other than enter:

inoremap { {}O

Apology accepted

[hummassa]

But I just want to comment on:

But many other people does not need UTF-8 most of the time, or even never. I am one of them. Also a smaller editor tends to have less bugs and fits better in rescue discs.

As I told before, vim-tiny is really tiny; and, as I told before, even a rescue disk may need an utf8-aware editor, because many linux distros are bringing utf8 as their default encoding nowadays.

VIM/vi are why I can never use other editors

[otomo_1001]

A typical document in word/excel at work, parens are myself realizing what happened.

(ok new document, lets get typing)

iJohn Jacob (dammit, how did that damn i get there? well lets delete the thing) 0x

(Dammit now word is thinking I am typing in Swahili, time to break out the mouse, sigh)
(good to go now)
i Jingleheimerschmidt (DAMMIT, forgot to hit escape, wait, not again, time for a bit more mouse action)

$i that's my name too! /esc:x

By this time I am fed up and fire up vim for windows and just paste what I need. This is also the reason I LOVE Abiword. Vi compatibility is the only way I can do anything of value in that word processor.

vim - vi impoved

[krischik]

But this post is about vim - vi improved. Improved - as in "better as".

Martin

Welcome to #.

[J'raxis]

If you guys want I can stop by chat with you, assuming there isn't enough native Arabic speakers.

Sure, come on in. Other than English speakers, I think #'s biggest population is either the Arabs, or Indonesians/Malaysians, but we always can always do with more users. :)

The channel name being only "#", make sure you use something like mIRC, X-Chat, ircle, or a similar "real" IRC client. The DALnet Java client (accessible from their own website, ironically), and some other generalized chat clients, such as Trillian, have difficulty dealing with a "nameless" channel like #. If you come in, let the ops know you know J^raxis, or type !voice to get moded +v; voice mode is how we differentiate the people who're actually "in" # from the newbies who fall in and out, get kicked, and so on.