Vim 6.4 Released 419
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 just want to say thanks. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A Year? (Score:2, Insightful)
That's not surprising. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yes, but is it better than emacs?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Uhm, because some of us like modal editors?
I thought Vim was a finished project (Score:2, Insightful)
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
Maybe it is not interesting... (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Not only is it a fantastic editor... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy? (Score:5, Insightful)
And in reply to the troll before you:
vim does have mouse support (:set mouse=a) in both terminal and, obviously, gui modes.
Also,
Re:Intellisense #1 feature, pay Bram to add it (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, go read this section: http://tinyurl.com/9qukb [tinyurl.com]
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:Intellisense #1 feature, pay Bram to add it (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Bugggg fix only. nice (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Intellisense #1 feature, pay Bram to add it (Score:3, Insightful)
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:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:emacs and vim are too difficult to use (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy? (Score:2, Insightful)
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? (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, write code that can be understood. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy? (Score:3, Insightful)
> 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:Last Of The Well Behaved Editors (Score:3, Insightful)
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!
Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy? (Score:2, Insightful)
I swap the mapping of the ESC and `~ keys to bring the ESC key closer.