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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.
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.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
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?
there's more than one way to do me.
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?
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
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.
:set wrap will solve your other qualm.
And in reply to the troll before you:
vim does have mouse support (:set mouse=a) in both terminal and, obviously, gui modes.
Also,
Install COX in your backend today!
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: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.
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.
I don't like trolls and mod against me if you like, but I'd prefer if you'd reply.
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.
I have a positive modifier on Troll. When I mod someone Troll their karma should go UP!
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.
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.)
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.
So.. it has come to this
Remap the (totally useless) CapsLock key to escape. Voila!