Slashdot Mirror
A Visual Walkthrough of New Features in Vim 7.0
An anonymous reader writes "Anybody who has used Linux or any other OS would be aware of the very powerful and feature rich text editor Vi. This interesting article takes a visual look at some of the new features in the latest version of Vim 7.0 — a Vi clone created by Bram Moolenaar. From the article: 'Just for once, I wouldn't mind siding with the beast if that is what it takes to use Vi. The modern avatar of Vi is Vim — the free editor created by Bram Moolenaar. Riding from strength to strength, this editor in its 7th version is a powerhouse as far as an editor is concerned. When ever I use Vim (or GVim for that matter), it gives me the impression of the Beauty and the Beast.'"
Real men just input the entire program at the command line using cat>myprog.c
Of course, "real men" score higher on machismo than common sense.
C'mon.. there is nothing that really needs saying on this topic, let the flame
wars begin.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
Ubuntu started shipping Vim 7.0 way back in April or May. Even though I quit Ubuntu, I have to say Ubuntu managed to do something right for once.
Patrick "Diablo-D3" McFarland || http://AdTerrasPerAspera.com
3 .. 2 ... 1
Flameware commence :
So from the article it seems Vim 7 is very powerful. I have tried to use vi several times but I just cant get used to the keys. I even have right here a "Vi editor Cheat Sheet" printed in small text as a card to have handy at my computer side.
I know the best way to learn to use Vim is to use it every day. My main editing tasks everyday are Latex processing and Java development. Usually I use Kile and Eclipse to solve my problems. As you can see I something like an IDE wore (wow). But I really would like to learn Vi (please I am not trolling).
I remember I once read about a Latex pluing or environment for Vi, but I found it a bit difficult to use it. Maybe i am making the wrong approach or something.
On the other side, why is it that the cursor move keys are HJKL when the touchtyping home keys are JKL; that is something that has always give me problems, I would feel more confortable having the JKL; as cursor because thats the place where I have my fingers (I touch type pretty quickly, thats one of the reasons I like to learn Vim, because of the reduced keyboard usage).
BTW, if anyone needs these tips, use CTRL+[ for ESC and CTRL+M for new line, this will prevent you from moving your hands (if you touch type of course) to weird places where those keys are. Oh and CTRL+H is the same as backspace...
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Does anyone know if this version allows you to configure it so that you can undo/redo like FreeBSD's vi (nvi)? With the previous versions, I've tried many times to no avail (including macro hacks).
I recently tried Cream For VIM see - http://sourceforge.net/projects/cream
It is an open source GPL best of add-on's released already built onto VIM. Makes VIM more CUA like, includes versions for MS Windows and many linuxes. I can recommend, and would like to hear others opinions
So he even manages to spell it wrong on his own webpage? And What is umulated? Do you mean umlauted? Which is something the Dutch hardly do. That's a German thing...
But vim is pretty cool too (I have windows ports for both the editors so I can use both in office). Arguing over which is better is a waste of time IMO, both do their job fantastically well.
I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you.
EMACS ? you mean Escape Meta Alt Control Shift ??
No, it's Bram Moolenaar. He's Dutch, molenaar means miller, and moolenaar is an old spelling of that. Both Molenaar and Moolenaar are common names; Mölenaar is just wrong, Dutch doesn't use umlauts like that.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
For the younger ones in the audience, Vim is a superset of vi, which was originally written by Bill Joy.
:-)
Yes, the same Bill Joy who heavily contributed to BSD, TCP/IP, NFS, and csh.
Yet I still count vi as one of his top contributions.
Raj Against the Machine! http://social-butterfly.appspot.com/
Fork Off!!!!
I can see myself using the tab and undo features, but the spillchucker adn autocomplete seme useliss 2 me.
How do i enable that clippy?
From the Article: :
:earlier 10m
:later 5s
... So I don't need to actually do the work any more? I can just start a new file "Project Plan", enter the command ":later 7200s" then print it out?
I realise that I have made a mistake. I can easily take the document to a point 10 minutes back by using the command
Or for that matter, move to a point 5 seconds ahead by using the command:
Umulated is when you emulate an umlaut on an pure ASCII system by replacing ü with ue. Or ö with oe.
// can someone else think of some examples that don't make German's spit their coffee?
#ifndef READER_IS_GERMAN
An example
E.g. Göring -> Goering, or Führer to Fuehrer.
#else
#endif
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
FTFA:
AWESOME! Need to finish writing a paper? Normally take about 2 hours? Just type in
:later 2h
No muss, no fuss.
Hmmm, hang-on, that doesn't sound as bad-ass as it did in the nineties.
I use VIM every day and never use any of it's advanced features, I use the same basic VI features I learnt many years ago. Vim's syntax highlighting amd peren matching are cool, but these are on by default. The most advanced I get is trying to make tabs display and save as 2 spaces, why anybody using an 80x24 terminal wants 4 space indents is a total mystery to me. Then there's that recording (q) thing I slip into about 5-6 times a day, is this macro recording or something and can I disable it or remap the keys?
It is also charity ware. The website asks for donations to a charity that helps children in Uganda.
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
Does Vim still default to starting in command mode? I suppose it does. For me, this is the biggest damn problem with it. It's a text editor, it should start in insert mode like every other editor. Pressing some key to start typing is bloody annoying, then pressing Esc to insert commands is also annoying. Ctrl-sequences are much better, and the default insert mode means I can do simple text editing and slowly learn other commands of the editor. To be honest, I also find Vim's shortcuts extremely unintuative. Want to go to the end of the document? 99% of editors, Ctrl-end. Vim, G. Sorry, that's retarded. Maybe it's based in the days of legacy terminals that didn't have arrow keys or even control sequences, but we're not in those days anymore; it's the text editor equivalent of still using a green-on-black text-only monitor.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Dutch uses umlauts like that. See for example "überhaupt", which while originally German can be found in Dutch dictionaries. And if you're referring to words such as "poëzie", that's a trema, not an umlaut.
Is there at least one editor in Linux that closely mimicks the feature set (and hotkeys) of Notepad2 (http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html), but in console mode? That's all I ever use on Windows these days. I know there's SciTe, but I want the same thing _in console_
Windows Users DON'T get excited about text editors !
But I hear Vista has a new updated version of notepad..... woa... can't wait to get my hands on that baby !!
Well yes, there are words that use umlauts, but they're imported words, and there are tremas which aren't actually umlauts, which is why I said they're not used "like that". We use a thing that looks like two dots on top of a letter, but they're not the same as umlauts.
Thanks for illustrating my point, not that this whole thread really needs all these posts. Sheesh :-)
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
thats because windows users cant read. (joking)
Actually windows users are far more advanced using things like ultraedit. Vi lol.
While I have no doubt that vim is a powerful and useful editor, it's increasingly large laundry-list of features is dragging it increasingly farther away from both the functionality and the philosophy behind vi. Keep in mind that vi is a visual superset of ex. As such, it was designed as a visual text editor that works on any cursor-addressable terminal. All functions are accessible from the home-row of keys, with the exception of the esc key. Editing features use regular expressions. In short, it's the ideal editor for the touch-typing administrator who can count on it working under fairly rough circumstances.
As a sysadmin, I have to ask how features like pop-up spellcheck and "omini" completion will help me edit config files on a vt102 terminal, (OK, my hard terminal is actually a vt520). vim is basically becoming a graphically-dependent editor that happens to use a similar editing structure to vi. Yes, I know about vi compatability mode, but that just throws out most of the last 'n' years of development.
My point? Not that development should be stopped, or that these goll-durned newfangled features ain't right, but that I wish it wasn't always trumpeted as "vi--but better." Most of the 'better' part of is are things that point away from vi.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
http://pics.obra.se/vi.jpg
Vim is nothing compared to Ed, the greatest WYGIWYG editor of all.
http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed.msg.html
One thing that could sell some of my co-workers on vim would be if it had better XML features. Nothing too fancy but at least prettyprinting and a wellformedness check. Add a few GUI things to make life easier for people using search+replace and it could well become the preferred editor (people are now making do with editpad, notepad2, xmlspy home edition, etc.)
Fancy stuff I would like; smartly(!) adding closing tags (i.e. only if needed to make the document wellformed, skip adding a closing tag if there's one allready there), checking against DTD/schema, font size zooming using ctrl+/- and ctrl+scrollmousebutton, and of course, using XPATHs instead of/alongside regular expressions for search and replace..
The XPATH search is why I keep hold of an old version of xmlspy professional that the company doesn't get new licenses for (suck it, new guy!).
Now, I'm sure much, if not all of this, can be added through plugins (anyone got a list? my current xml plugin doesn't do too well at adding closing tags only when needed, and doesn't pretty print) but for my coworkers it has to be an out-of-the-box setup.exe experience..
The earlier/later thing would be a boon to a journalist friend of mine - then again, proper autosave in microsoft word would be, too. (He has a knack for shutting down and answering 'yes' to any 'are you really sure you want to throw away a day's work?' dialogues..)
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
Anybody who has used Linux or any other OS would be aware of the very powerful and feature rich text editor Vi
Sorry to be a smartass, but i'm pretty sure most windows users would not have the foggiest clue what the "powerful and feature rich text editor Vi" is :-) For all they care, somebody probably mispelled some useful word like "vice" or "vine". The only people that weren't included in the summary as being aware of Vi are people that havn't used computers, or people that have used a computer without using the OS.
/me goes off to ask his high school aged sister about the great features of Vi
No, he means Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping.
(And I even remember the days when that was a lot).
Man do I get sick of trying to close documents in other applications with :wq
I even tried to close firefox with that a few weeks back.
For me though, programming without vim would be horrific. I've used Vim for so many years that I probably couldn't use another editor.
I tried Kedit, because some of my students were using it and I thought I should have a go, but I found it too krufty.
Since 90% of my programming is console based (the other 10% being shitty text only websites created in Vim, and slightly more funky opengl, written with guess what..), I use the console mode vim a lot. Although I am partial to gvim when a gui presents itself.
I get embaressingly lost in guis though, usually when someone is asking me to help them with something. I'm pretty much used to bash only.
One day I may try Emacs, but once you get used to the minimalist aproach, the bloat of emacs doesn't appeal.
Spineal Tap (The umlaut goes over the n).
"I think it would be a good idea!"
Gandhi, about Internet Security
'it looks like you're writing a c++ file!'
Noooooooooooooo......
"rueckgeld" means "change" (monetary).
nvi forever.
VIM has strayed too far from what is vi. You might as well use Emacs or Visual Studio. For those of us who prefer vi, nvi is the one.
But it is also becoming what vi was never really intended to be IMO. What makes vi such a great editor is a number of factors, such as:
- it is small
- it does a lot of things that are useful for editing source files
- it is very economical with bandwidth etc
- all commands map to keys that are found on all terminal keyboards
If I should say anything against vim it would be that it can do too many things that are only eye candy or 'cool features'. Fortunately you can turn them off, which I always do. If you develop on several different UNIXes (and other OSes with UNIX like environments) getting used to all the extra features in vim can be a real pain, when you have to work with the classic form of vi.
Recently, Richard Stallman gave a speech in which he illustrated an academic point about programming history by quoting a guy who described vi as 'an editor spread at sword-point and which is really hard to use'.
I think I speak for all moderate vi(m) users when I say -- DEATH and DAMNATION (in that order) to this Cardinal of the CTRL key! Needless to say my own local vim user group has dispatched assassins to kill Mr. Stallman, but this is hardly the end of the story. The fact is that a man has referred to another man who in turn expressed some often-voiced reservations about OUR EDITOR! On behalf of all editors of text everywhere, I implore EMACS users to return to the true path, lest you be burned at the stake and then go to hell, the Buffer From Which There Is No Unloading. We'll see how productive you are then, with your ctrl-meta-alt and your ELISP and your 'ring buffer', whatever THAT is.
Peace and love to all.
^C
^X
quit
q
QUIT
exit
zz
ZZ
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
:x :wq
is equivalent to
and becomes an automatic response.
I was asked this the other day. Use an IDE, it is easier than using vim, why cause yourself pain?
Learn vi if you want to do large scale file manipulation, searching etc. But really don't bother if all you want to do is Java and Latex.
Now if you used troff... then you should do it in vi, troff demands that you have nothing to help you and create completely incomprehensible documents to all concerned. Also if you are doing Unix admin then learn vi.
Vi and Emacs are superb, in the same way as the Mustang from bullet is superb, that doesn't meane everyone should use them.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
The screenshots page shows a GUI around xmllint...
Nothing wrong with ultraedit using libxml2 and friends, it's more sensible than writing their own libs. The thing is, perhaps unix people can already do everything that Ultraedit makes availiable to Windows users from the command line? Just a thought.
You could consider vi(m) powerful only if you think Edlin is a breeze from the future. People who have work to do, instead of tinkering, have moved on to Eclipse and Visual Studio.
urpmq -i vim-enhanced
Name | vim-enhanced
Version | 6.3
Release | 21mdk
Group | Editors
Size | 1239458
Packager | Olivier Thauvin [nanardon at mandriva.org]
Summary | A version of the VIM editor which includes recent enhancements
Description | VIM (VIsual editor iMproved) is an updated and improved version of the vi editor. Vi was the first real screen-based editor for UNIX, and is still very popular. VIM improves on vi by adding new features: multiple windows, multi-level undo, block highlighting and more. The vim-enhanced package contains a version of VIM with extra, recently introduced features like Python and Perl interpreters.
Install the vim-enhanced package if you'd like to use a version of the VIM editor which includes recently added enhancements like interpreters for the Python and Perl scripting languages. You'll also need to install the vim-common package.
So sayeth URPMI of the vim-enhanced version which ships with Mandriva 2006.0; and yes, it does start in editing mode, not command mode
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Isn't that way of interacting with a computer just a tiny bit anachronistic? I have been working with editors for editing code since 1980 and had been using lots of editors ... from ISPF and vi over (x)emacs to IDEs like VisualC++, Netbeans or Eclipse. :)
I wish that some of the more modern IDE plugins would suck less when it comes to syntax highlighting and automatic code formatting, but I do not see much place for dinosaurs like vi(m) in my daily routine any more.
I wonder why those who still use vi not also use Wordstar as their favorite word processor? Ctr-somethings wherever you look! Or do they?
vi lets you access all of its powerful functionality using only these natural keys for typing (well, plus ESC, which is another computer addition, but its only used to flip out of insert mode, when you're done a bunch of typing, typically). Being able to move to the top of the screen by typing capital-H is a lot faster than control-whatever/control-whatever, or taking your hand off the keyboard, reaching for your mouse, aiming, and clicking. (It still amazes me that this latter approach is the one that leads the way in modern word processors, due to its obvious, but inefficient, nature.)
This is why vi fans often joke as emacs standing for escape-meta-alt-control-shift; to a seasoned vi user, all the escapes in emacs are far more confusing than the biggest complaint about vi, it's two modes. (Reminds one of the joke about the newbie asking the TA for help; the TA says, "you do know vi has two modes, right?" The newbie replies, "yes, the one where it beeps, and the one where it doesn't.") But at the end of the day, the concept of two modes isn't rocket science to learn, and as far as all the key commands one has to learn, it's no different than emacs, where I found the key sequences far more confusing.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
This is a sad recycled article which featured at linux.com today around 4 months back !!!! http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/05/01/22352 42/
Striving to be common...
Hey, wait! Don't just go to sleep without telling us what those bindings are!
I resemble that remark.
Best editor evar is mp (minimum profit)
It's just an editor. It's tiny. Has colors and tells you what commands you have as an option. For those who still live in the 80s: Menus are cool these days, they are not an invention of the evul M$ empire. When you're in X mp also has an x interface. Everything else tastez like bloatware. Exept maybe nano which should start with the -w option by default.
I have to disagree, I am a long-time Emacs user, but I cannot stand the graphical interface, it is ugly, the ugliest thing on my system.
I use Emacs without X inside Gnome-Terminal, almost the same X functionality is provided by the Gnome-Terminal menu and without the hideous looking window.
Gedit is beautiful, light and responsive, Emacs should look more like that.
My little Linux and tech blog
The quote at the bottom of the discussion page when I loaded was:
"When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. -- Larry Wall in the perl man page"
Seemed oddly relevant.
OH MY GOD, gvim takes up 13 precious megabytes, how will I cope. Of which only 3.8 MB is private dirty BTW. Such is the enormous price one has to pay for a decent UI and decent font rendering
By contrast vim alone takes up 8.5 MB. If you don't want it, don't install gvim... what's the point in moaning on Slashdot about it?
PS, I'd be interested to see how much memory GNU Emacs with GTK uses up Bear in mind that it still doesn't use Freetype to render the fonts, and so the memory apparantly eaten by GTK will be lower.
...pardon me while I look for my asbestos suit....
A goal is a dream with a deadline
I know the best way to learn to use Vim is to use it every day.
That's the only way. Getting to like vi (or vim) requires that you damage your brain, and a tool to do that is already to hand - vi. After using it every day for a while, it will seem quite natural to you that the letter "l" is the command to move the cursor to the right.
In the earlier releases of emacs, there was no GUI, it was all command line and simple commands were done by pairs of cntrl-? Meta-? and so on. At first, it was confusing to just figure out how to shut the program down.
Don't get me wrong, it was immensely powerful, even back then....it just wasn't even remotely user-friendly until you gained some serious experience with it.
On the other hand, vi was also a bit cryptic but did not have as many features. However, the learning curve was a lot shorter in my opinion. I used vi all through college (bachelor's portion anyways) and nroff (which lives on Linux as groff) to write my reports and resumes.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
You're talking about Microsoft Word, right? It's called a word processor, dumbass, not "text editor".
Signed,
Windows Power User
Now that you get GUI editors that not only auto-complete code, but know about the classes within the application you are developing and can correct method calls and parameter types who the hell would use VI to write code?
Rapid Application Development VI is not.
I suspect that there is a little bit of protectionism going on, in that, to the lay person, watching an IT boffin do stuff in VI looks "impressive" and makes the develper look like they are doing something difficult.
In my applcations, I always think, if a lay person is able to work out what my code does, then I've done my job as far as well-written code goes. Code should be easy to read, easy to correct and damn near obvious what it does. Using vi for programming obfuscates code and is used by those unwilling to move on.
The only time vi should be used is if you are editing config or other admin files on a server when using telnet which should be damn close to never, on a live box at least.
America, Home of the Brave.
I use both Vim and Emacs, and both have advantages.
Emacs: You can run a shell-like process inside the editor, which leads to really, really cool things like editing code in one buffer, and then sending that code into a running interpretor in another buffer. This allows something like "visual" debugging, only in a proper editor.
Vim: If you know how to touch-type, vim just has the most comfortable (in terms of avoiding things like repetitive strain injury) keyboard layout. It really beats stupid CTRL- or META- something combinations, which can give you pains in your wrists if you use them a lot.
Anyway, enough objectivity. Flame on!
Aiiieeeeeeee -- in what level of hell does vim have menus! Linuxers, we hates them we does!
Anybody who has used Linux or any other OS would be aware of the very powerful and feature rich text editor Vi.
The remaining computer users, however, are left in the dark I'm afraid.
I love vi. There is not a single UNIX machine in the world that does not have it. I can go to Timbuktu, login to their sole Indy box and start editing right away.
:w!
I hate vi. To be precise, I hate that it changes. I hate new features. I am not Luddite, I am just a weak person, who succumbs to new features of vi very easily. And when it happens, vi looses its fundamentalist virginity. I start enjoy navigating between lines using arrow keys in the edit mode on my Linux box, but when I switch to my Solaris server, this feature does not work anymore, I get ugly "A" and "B" lines inserted between the beautiful lines of code. This sucks.
The advantage of vi is its "standard universality". That means availability everywhere of the same set of features.
I am adding to it "absence of non-universal features". Every time you innovate vi, you are subjecting new users of vi to the very thing that vi is against - universality. I ask you: do not spoil the users, do not lie to them with your new features.
The development of vi should be very slow and the most emphasis should be given to the universality of the changes, and to the fast propagation of those changes if you really really have to make those changes.
The best solution would be to freeze any new features of vi and make sure that all the old features are available on every single UNIX machine in the world.
ZZ
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Real men of genius
Today we salute you Mr. vi editor coder guy.
Mr. vi editor coder guy!
You type at lightning speed while while the rest of us squint our eyes in wonder.
What the hell you just did to my file!?
You scour through code like a red-hot knife on butter
now my file looks funny in Notepad!!
Thanks to you Mr. vi editor coder guy, you remind us, it's all about the code!
Mr vi editor coder guy!
- these are not the droids you are looking for -
As much as a Vim-fan I am (I really am!), I really want to see something like TextMate for Linux! It's hard to describe what makes TextMate so great, take a look at the Screecasts on the homepage and on the Ruby on Rails homepage to get an idea...
I use Ubuntu almost full-time but I still have my G4 iBook which I use when I'm coding, just because of TextMate. Before TextMate I used to be a die-hard Vim-fan and I know my way around it pretty well.
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
Every so often I'll see an article like this (vim, emacs, whatnot) and I'll go check it out. I keep trying gvim (I think after downloading and playing with it again this morning it's been probably 4-5 times now over the past few years), and I keep getting frustrated. For a developer using Windows, and programming primarily in .NET, what does gvim offer me over something like Notepad++ (my current editor of choice)? The extent of my raw text file editing is mostly classic ASP pages (small mods, nothing from scratch) or the occasional txt data file or something. Everything else I do in Visual Studio.
I keep trying gvim out, but it just seems like too much work to get to my basic functionality that I've come to expect out of other windows editors. Some of my shortcut keystrokes don't work, and I don't really want to track down how to remap them. I shouldn't have to. It took me 10 minutes to figure out how to change the default font, and make it stick. The same to get the bottom scrollbar to stick. I shouldn't have to look up settings in one file, and edit a different text file in order to make simple configuration changes. gvim offers "tabs", but not as I've come to expect tabs to work. It's not so much a "tabbed interface" as it is an interface that "supports tabs". How do I make it open each file by default in a tab?
I dunno...maybe I'm just too lazy. It seems very powerful, for the occasional edit and decent find and replace in files, it seems like too much work to get set up the right way, and on top of that you have to learn the basic commands, too.
Maybe if I worked in both Windows and Linux on a more regular basis, then it would be more of an advantage? I'll play with it some more and maybe I'll force myself to learn it. Just my $.02.
Speaking of transliteration of umlauts, "über" should really be spelt "ueber" when you for whatever reason can't use the letter ü.
Get That Fucking Mouse Out Of Here didn't form a word, but VIM had a nice eastern European sound.
It was called 'vim.' If vim can't determine the file type from the extension, it guesses based on the contents. Try editing a .m file, for example; that can be Objective-C or Mathematica (I think; maybe I mean Mathlab), but it generally guesses the correct one.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
that you can write any software using notepad, so why bother with the bloatware?
The "ö" to "oe" transliteration only applies to German language text. In other languages (such as Swedish) it is quite wrong as "ö" (in Swedish, it is a different letter and not a decorated "o").
mc has been my favorite file and text editor for a long time now, works in both a GUI terminal window and in a CLI shell...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I started out using vi early in my career (on a PDP/11). These days I mostly use either Eclipse, Visual Studio, or NotePad++. However, when I either need to edit a very large file, or manipulate a large text file using regular expressions - vim and gvim are hard to beat. My thanks to the folks that have kept this useful tool alive and running on modern machines.
[Insert pithy quote here]
muggenzifters!
That would be a better title. Its a bit difficult to get menu options like File and Tools, to appear in your console. ;)
I still like IBM's EPM editor (on OS/2). It emulated Emacs, sed, ed, edlin or any other editor if you cared to customize it, and was GUI if you wanted it to be. The memories ... are surely better than the reality ;)
As for GVim, I like the combo interface on Windows. On the Mac, there's a few GUI inconsistencies, but you have to love the fact that the console program is identical. And who worries about 13MB anymore for a PC when a 1GB stick costs around $65?
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I'm looking at Emacs 21.3.1 in X mode, and I can't figure out what ugly window you're talking about. It looks pretty much exactly the same as a session inside a terminal window except that the scrollbar is graphical instead of ANSI.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Surely it's just me... but where's the article with the visual walkthrough?
If you want to learn vi, play nethack. Then the hjkl will seem natural.
Of course, it may pose a problem when you're trying to type an email and cc: just scares you away.
I've been programming since the 1970s when we really didn't have screen editors. We used line editors, and had to keep retyping the "list" command to see how our program was shaping.
VI was actually not the first screen editor I used. The first I used was the old Textedit on the Mac. I thought it was wonderful. I could actually move the cursor around and see what I wrote. My introduction to VI was when I first started working with C on Unix. I hated it.
VI was primative. Where my Mac editor was single mode, I had to switch back and forth between command mode and insert mode with VI. Where my Mac editor would wrap text, VI wouldn't. Where I could easily find a command with the menus, with VI, I had to remember archaic key strokes. Who in the hell wrote this junk!
However, once I started getting use to it, VI grew on me. The commands I quickly learned could be combined. For example, "d" deletes. "e" moves to the end of a word. "de" deletes to the end of a word and "3de" deletes the next three words. "xp" transposes two characters. There was an order to them: "d" for delete", "f" for find, "r" for replace. It started making sense. Then I started learning the ins and outs of RegEx, and I never looked back.
Not only that, but I quickly learned that for program editing, VI simply worked better than Textedit or Notepad. Unlike word oriented text editors, VI was line oriented just like a computer program. I've been using VI ever since. Over the years, I've tried GUI editors (Jedit, Nedit, KDEdit, TextPad, etc.) but I keep returning back to VI.
Most of these young whipper JDs (Java Developers) with their "Object Orientation" and "Virtual Machines" think of my preference for this non-graphical editor as quaint. Sort of like the way you'd look at Grandpa playing around with his model trains. That is until they realize that I can write code a lot faster than they can.
Last year, one developer told me it was going to take a few hours to clean up a particular program. I loaded the files in VI and transformed them in a matter of minutes. He was shocked. How can this "obsolete" little text editor do the job much more efficiently and faster than his feature ladened GUI? Why doesn't his editor support regular expressions? Why can VI load the files in less than a second while it takes VisualStudio three or four minutes? How can I write a program and never have to touch the mouse?
My sons have just started taken up programming. My 15 year old kid likes working with PHP, and first refused to even look at VI -- to old fashion and out of date -- just like his dad. He had a *better* IDE that was made specifically for HTML/PHP web development.
I recently caught him using VI. He had to admit that once you get over the basics, VI is faster and easier to use for his needs. My oldest is in college and I saw using VI for writing his term papers and essays. He said he found working with VI better because it kept him concentrating on content than formatting. Plus, it makes writing a lot faster. Takes a lot of time switch to the mouse each time really slows you down. He showed me how he programmed a macro spell checker using an ASCII dictionary and ispell. He also showed me the "linebreak" feature in VIM (something I didn't know about).
After all these years, I still haven't found anything that is as efficient as VI for editing. From what I see in Linux world, a lot of younger programmers who grew up with nothing but graphical interfaces agree with me.
May the colon key on your keyboard stop working for you and the seven generations to come after you!
99% of editors, Ctrl-end. Vim, G. Sorry, that's retarded.
Control-End is hard for a touch typist to reach, and it's in a different place on different keyboards. Maybe that's convenient for people who don't touch type and who use editors rarely enough to remember key bindings, and maybe starting in insert mode is convenient for people whose needs are served by Notepad.exe, but other people have other needs.
If you like an editor that uses Control-End and starts in Insert mode, you are well served. Why are you trying to force the remaining 1% of the editors to conform to your notions of how an editor ought to work? Don't you already have enough choices? Are you a member of the Borg and feel the need to assimilate and change everybody to conform to your own (IMO retarded) notions of how computers ought to work?
The tab feature doesn't seem very well integrated. Vim 7 seems to make a distinction between files that are open and files that are open in tabs. Why would I want that?
Meanwhile, a real woman just goes and manually does whatever it is her husband's silly "program" was supposed to do.
Ach! That explains the extra 'o'. I'd wondered about it--I didn't think Dutch went in for double letters in open syllables. On the other hand, it's rather inconsiderate of the Dutch for not using umlauts on about half of their o's. We English-speakers need some reason to laugh at you|them!
Look out!
What do you need an editor to do other than edit the text in a file and then save it? Perhaps you would like it to run to the corner store and pick up a 2L bottle of carbonated artificially flavored cafinated sugar water?
Let's call it pop and be done with it. Let's use the backspace, insert and enter keys and be done with it.
How do other people deal with this? Say you have a line containing all sorts of punctuation and you want to copy some words. But you cannot easily tell how many "vi words" make up the "human words" you want. Sometimes I advance word by word and thereby count how many words I need to copy. Sometimes I just make a guess. Anyone?
It's hard to get excited when you have no soul.
in Danish ø -> oe æ -> ae å -> aa
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
The automatic tabs keep indenting everything improperly, and the lack of an end-of-line stop that autowraps down to the next line when you're using the arrow keys to get to the eol (while doing mass editing of raw data files)is pure frustration. Turning on vi compatibility dumbs it down too much, making it even more unfriendly to use.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Emacs 21.4 uses about 11MB of RAM on my system (Fedora Core 4).
Gvim 6.3.71 uses about 12MB of RAM.
There are two types of people.
1) Those who can think very clearly and can write whatever they need to in one go, without ever having to revise it.
2) Those who cannot write even a single line without needing to use the delete feature 10 times.
For the type 2) people vi is not a useable editor. At least not for anything that requires writing more than a couple of lines. I unfortunately am a type 2) person and have to live with emacs. IOW vi is for perfect people, and I am actually a blathering idiot when it comes to typing in my thoughts or code.
I still use vi quite a lot, for quick editing. But if I have to write more than a couple of lines then I start searching for emacs.
I am quite used to the two editors. Since when you are within emacs you can do almost anything, there is very little motivation to learn another editor. This is why I hate having to use any other program that tries to make me learn its editor, and does not provide emacs key bindings.
It is good that some of the emacs key bindings are used in many editors like the firefox input box.
You had a magnetized paperclip? I had to move bits by feel!
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
W00t, Godwin's Law in a vi story.
Anybody who has used Linux or any other OS would be aware of the very powerful and feature rich text editor Vi.
Much like seeing Windows helps you appreciate Linux, seeing Vi helps you appreciate Emacs.
Have you read my journal today?
sync until it's still,
salt until it crunches.
He ended up using ed.
As a Finn, I actually find it better to simply forget the dots if the charset doesn't have them, in the style über -> uber. The correct form is usually apparent from the context, whereas the ae/oe/ue form looks like a diphthong to us and thus confusing. It's particularly annoying when you have a long monophthong like "ää" transliterated into "aeae"
However, there are some examples where the umlaut really makes a difference: näin (I saw) vs. nain (I fucked).
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Very few or no console editors on Linux seem to fit my needs. Ive tried vim but it seemed as useless to me as the others. For instance, I need soft line wrapping, that is, the editor wraps the line on the screen without inserting a line break. This is so if you add something in the middle it doesnt throw everything else out of alignment below. This is also called continuous line wrapping. I also like to have a constant display of the line number on the screen, and modeless editing. Really, the only thing that works somewhat decently for me on the console, is DOS edit, with its drop down menus and such. Is there something similar on linux?
You can get the traditional vi here.
I agree that vim has strayed far away from the original vi, the two are not really the same.
So, this article talks about the following "cool" features:
* on-the-fly spellchecker
* bracket highlighting
* keyword auto-completion
* tabs
* undo branches
I'm neither a vi nor emacs zealot, but this list really made me yawn - apart from the undo branches (which are cool but unnecessary if you do any CVS or SVN (which you do in *any* professional environment)) these features are something that about *any* editor I've encountered in the last years has.
I ACK the power of vi and emacs, but I wouldn't have thought that auto-completion and especially bracket highlighting would be something new and great...
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?
I know that, filetype.vim, I was talking about when you open a New File (without a filename) it would work out the filetype from what I wrote in it.
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
Let us not forget the standard ed editor, the pinnacle of user friendliness! (Or is it sword point? I forget...)
... and check out Bill's comment on patents and copyright.
I ask you, so what? Every other decent editor already HAS spell checking and bracket hilighting. Vim is just catching up. It has become so ingrained in developers' minds that people have been quite inattentive to other good editors popping up over the years. Kate is one good example.
I have switched to vi after seeing one of my college professors use it. Watching a vi master edit a source file is a truly breathtaking experience that people who say they do not like vi are certain to have never had. After the experience, the temptation to learn vi is irresistible.
The first thing I noticed when I emerged the VIM 7 was
:NoMatchParen. I've verified that this works .vimrc.
.vimrc?
the hilighing of matched parens (not to be confused with
'showmatch' that bounces the cursor to the matching
paren when you're typing).
The article says that this behavior can be turned off
by typing
when in VIM, but I can't get it to work in my
Has anyone figured out how to turn this behavior off
from
*sigh* back to work...
and you grew up playing Doom before you used linux, you want to use WASD. .vimrc so I just use nano.
But I'm too lazy to set my
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I do. Obviously I use Visual Studio for my coding work, and Word for writing documents meant for my co-workers, but any html or text work I do is done in GVim. In fact, I often have 3 or 4 GVim windows open at pretty much any time that I have Visual Studio open. I do most of my repetitive tasks in GVim using regular expressions and then I cut & paste.
Vim has saved me countless hours of work in other tasks too.
Real Programmers are named Mel
Infuriate left and right
I just posted a link to that and then found yours when scrolling down. You beat me!
Arrrrrrrr! you scurvy dog!
Infuriate left and right
The UNIX geek's equivalent of the Rolex watch. More than perhaps any other program than I can think of, it's been considered a badge of honour if a person has the terminal degree of autism required to understand it. I think that also is the main thing about the application that I resent...I don't consider it to be genuinely useful, but simply so abstract, intentionally user-hostile, and obtuse that it confers bragging rights to anybody who is actually able to use it. I also strongly suspect that that is the primary reason why it has endured.
;-)
Some of us prefer applications that don't require the accompaniment of controlled substances for us to be able to comprehend them.
No, we use vim with latex..
Real men just input the entire program at the command line using cat>myprog.c A real man writes directly to the disk with a magnetised paperclip.
I can remember the days when 8 meg was a lot for a disk, never mind memory.
2.4M removable platters anyone?
The latest version from the Berkeley boys, nvi, is quite capable of holding its own with vim and does a better job of making its extensions (like "undo") feel like part of the normal command set. It's simply a more accurate implementation.
I've been using vi for a quarter of a century now, and have used vim and other clones like stevie and elvis when they were the only option. All but elvis have had me occasionally tripping over my fingers as their command structure didn't quite follow the original.
Oh no! Vim has been updated? There's so many commands to remember now! There's even a visual mode?!? Gotta get a bigger mug...that means more caffeine for my already-frazzled nerves...or have a shirt iron-on transfer done with the commands printed upside down so all I'd have to do is look down to see the commands...which reminds me, gotta put on some pants...
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Most of you understand why someone would subject themselves to the steep learning curve and esoteric keybinds of Vim, but for those who don't, here are some short video demo examples of why a programmer should consider learning Vim:
Vim Video Demos
I thought it meant "Eventually Mallocs All Core Storage"...
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Actually, I do work a little differently in vim. I use the multi-level undo, and I enjoy spending my first day on a new installation trying to figure out how to get scp:// urls working and then fixing whatever's broken with the syntax coloring this time.
Still, at some point in the late 80s, I began to hate emacs, and that's the way it still is. I guess I had to build it one too many times.
From the section on keyword autocompletion:
"I press the key combination [Ctrl+x] [Ctrl+o] and Vim will smartly guess the correct keyword and insert it"
Anything that doesn't include ":" is the antivi! The believers must stay strong through these hard times! We must not aldulterate our holy editor with control and meta keys!
I had to use vi once, from a Live CD. To change one letter in Grub's config file. One letter. Seemed fairly simple, even if I did not knew nothing about vi. So I start vi only to find out that this editor does not let you edit a file unless you enter a special command. And try to figure out that command (or looking it up in the help).
Since then I've asked and learned some basic commands, just so that I do not get into a fit for trying to use an editor (when no other choice exists) that does not let you edit a file spontaneously.
So much for this text 'editor'. I'd rather call it a text viewer with an optional edit mode.
By the way, it'd be nice if people making Live CDs would rather use the GNU e3 editor which is only some 12 KB in size and emulates (some) key bindings of emacs, vi and word star (what"s that ?).
I generally don't partake in editor discussions, but I thought I would point out something I find really interesting I figured out about emacs as compared to vi. I've used both, but almost always use emacs except for quick editing tasks.
The thing I find most fascinating about emacs is it's ability to give me more than one keyboard; each time you press Ctl, Alt, Meta, and Shift, you have access to another virtual, or meta keyboard, that can be used to enter commands. I like to think of it as keyboard layers with instant access simply by pressing a key. This is great for overall speed, and although a bit confusing at first (not like vi's two modes are all that intuitive either), it becomes totally natural after some time and practice, just like a musical instrument.
The two main layers can be thought of as Ctrl-X and Ctrl-C, which technically act like the menus you would access under windows using Alt-F, Alt-W, Alt-E, etc. There are also the very frequently used commands that are attached directly to Ctl and Meta (Alt) for letter, word, line and buffer movement and modification, and they actually follow a very structured form: Ctrl for letters and lines (single char/line movement), Meta for words and paragraphs (multiple characters and lines), and Ctrl-Alt for buffers. Of course there are exceptions to the rule that have come about over years of use, but in general this is the case, and if you find an exception that doesn't work for you or you can think of something better, you can always do a global-set-key to switch it to your way of thinking.
The computer as a tool is limited by the amount of information we can get into it so that we can command it to do our bidding. The emacs keyboarding system allows for a greater amount of information to be entered into the system at minumum physical cost at the price of some adaptation and learning time. In the end, if you want to get the maximum speed and efficency with your machine this type of system is essential.
But what do I know?
Listen to my music.
I fake my way along with Vim, in fact, use it frequently, but fake my way along with mostly "i" and ESC.
I've looked at the help for the new thingie, and googled a bit, but would really appreciate a simple step-by-step for getting autocomplete working for, say, Javascript or C#. Or even HTML.
Note, this post has informed you aboout the Jacaltec language of Guatemala and (if you view the HTML source) the uses of U+308 aka ̈ the combining diaresis
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Wow! Vim is becoming almost as good as Emacs!
o hai
If you have are an Emacs user developing Java code, you really should be using the JDE for Emacs. While I don't remember it having a refactor tool, it does understand and support many specific language-specific additions, including automatic completion of members, etc. It also is able to identify Classes you need for this Class and also remove unneeded Classes from the import list. There are lots of other support libraries for developing Java code in Emacs, including support for the PMD lint-like tools.
I assume that is some way towards the "language integration" that you refer to.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
That's not Godwin's law, at least in not in the sense of comparing your opponent to the Nazis. Here's an example of Godwin's law in this context :
BurnEmacsHeretics: The world would be a lot simpler if everyone learnt VI. Then I would need to write scripts to auto uninstall Emacs on my boxen, or have my black clad, goosestepping lab monitors break the fingers of anyone who installs it. Plus I wouldn't need to bug users home internet connections to see if they are finding ways to get around the scripts.
GasAllViUnternmenschen: Oh, I see. Ein Lab, Ein Sysadmin, Ein Editor. Fukk you, Hitler!
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Me totally relate t' that. `Tis so much easer t' regex away then t' go through large chunks o' HTML/code bits. Me be usin' vim since 1999 an' me nay planin' t' let 't sink t'Davy Jones' locker on me desktop any time soon! Anyone who thinks otherwise be nay fit t' invoke th' programmin' gods!
"If I have been able to see so far, It is because I went out and bought a damn binoculars" - Ze da Esquina
You are far too subtle for me...
YMMV
Ratboy
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
Am I the only one that rushed to my browser to see who had nain.com, or, especially amusing, nain.org?
Definitely added to my "four letter words that befuddle" list. Been using the nivenesque "futz" for decades.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
He's from the Wild West, where editors use Dead Trees.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Any idea if one can use vim as the default editor in VS 2003 or 2005 while maintaining all debugging and other features expected of VS integration? I have never been able to get the plug in for that to work.
So I am agreeing with the parent post.
I like the idea of VIM being able to undo to any particular point in the history. This seems like a good additional feature, and I'm sure I'll get the latest version now. I tend to use very few features that are not in the earliest versions of vi since I am old and set in my ways.
==
Forget elvis, vim, vi, gvim... WinVi32...and certainly forget emacs (even emacs in viper mode...the spawn of both these evil ones...) forget 'em all.
You need TDE!
http://www.geocities.com/jadoxa/tde/index.html
I am in no way affiliated with TDE.
If you want to get rid of the graphical stuff, put this in your .emacs file.
It looks better in term, but you lose the crap.
(menu-bar-mode -1)
(scroll-bar-mode -1)
(tool-bar-mode -1)
If you work with Windows at all, I highly recommend Notepad2. It's that good.
> By default, [on-the-fly spellchecking] is turned off. But by navigating ...
> to Tools -> Spelling -> "Spell check on"
Uhh, sorry, you lost me there.
I'm still hoping we'll get support for proportional fonts and elastic tabstops in a later version. Could be a long wait :(
Strange - I like vim for the very same reason. In Vim it's the different modes which make the different keyboards. And more so then in vanilla Vi because Vim supports more key combinations and more modes. See:
o r/Vim#Modes
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Learning_the_vi_edit
Especialy the visual mode is cool. Select some text and you have a whole new set of commands to operate on selected text.
And of corse you can customize the key mappings for each mode seperatly - another feature missing from Vi.
Martin
In the end it's just the language we have learned to speak with our editor. They both say the same things, but in different ways. Our brains work differently...and hence, there are two ways of editing. I am a bit torn as to whether the first editor is our choice, or we have a natural inclination, but it's fascinating that we choose one or the other.
The wars should end, we are only just different.
Listen to my music.