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Vim 8.0 is coming

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181–190 of 420 posts

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#181

Is there a way how I can copy blocks of code outside the vim window to another application without also copying the line numbers? Also is there one simple key combination to [un]comment a line or a selected block? I found out how to do many simple operations with this ancient tool, what can be really fun if you have nothing else funny in life (too many people have no other sources of fun, really) - but I am still not…

Perhaps you should try watching some screencasts with experienced vim users editing text, the speed they can achieve and the level of precision is almost impossible in any other editor.

It is true that vim is not optimized for ease of use, especially for newcomers, and also has some problems that are considered to be solved for any decent GUI framework. But I don't see how this can affect creativity. Does carbon fiber guitar somehow magically make you more creative? Similarly, does plain old guitar made of wood hinder your creativity? I don't think so.

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#182
post #10
post #4

I have vim, neovim and emacs (and spacemacs) installed. Right now I'm trying to get into emacs a bit more. What's interesting to me, and the reason I try to keep up to date with the latest changes for all four editors, is that it's been now, what, 25 years (?) since emacs and vim started "competing" and they still are. I guess we could be saying the same in 10 years about firefox and chrome, but it still is amazing i…

I became an heavy Emacs user as I could not find the comfort of Borland IDEs in UNIX, as I started to use it. Since I moved away from C++ into Java and .NET land, never felt the need to use them any longer. And nowadays, with Qt Creator, Clion, xCode, AppCode and VS, I also don't feel the need of them when I need to go back to C++. It is very good to know the basics from plain Vi, because there are still commercial U…

Vi emulation for those editors keeps me sane when using them

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I want to extend my tools with code, not configuration." You can do that with Visual Studio too with Visual Studio Extensions. You can also manage extensions (including those from other users) with a built-in package manager, just like in Emacs. Here's a Visual Studio Extensions tutorial if you're interested: https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Visual-Studio-Toolbox/Buildi...

Yes, but writing a Visual Studio extension (or Eclipse, etc.) is much higher friction than Emacs. In emacs, I can just open a buffer in emacs-lisp-mode, write a quick function, immediately eval it and start using it. The instant feedback means that quick, small customizations are very low cost. It's like the difference between writing a code generator for Java vs using macros in Lisp.

I see. Can you give me an example of a function you wrote in that way?

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#184

Dropped the support for MS-DOS. It was too big to fit in memory. This is a little surprising since the latest version of Emacs still supports MS-DOS[1]. If anything, you'd expect Vim to be the smaller and faster choice but it seems this isn't the case anymore... Then again, I don't really understand the culture of all the customisation/plugins/etc. around text editors; part of the reason why I originally chose Vi(m)…

Frankly, everything OS it supports should be re-evaluated for support. A lot of cruft could be removed if Bram would make a break and say "We are dropping these at Vim 9".

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's decidedly not true. Nor is this about customization of workflows. I am talking about actual unadulterated power to do things you cannot do in an IDE. All IDEs optimize for the average use case. If they do expose a set of advanced commands or transformations, they are hidden deep in the menus and what you can do with them is extremely rigid and limited. At most you have a few dozen commands (you would call them…

> "That's decidedly not true. Nor is this about customization of workflows. I am talking about actual unadulterated power to do things you cannot do in an IDE. All IDEs optimize for the average use case. If they do expose a set of advanced commands or transformations, they are hidden deep in the menus and what you can do with them is extremely rigid and limited. At most you have a few dozen commands (you would call t…

In Visual Studio, creating a custom keybinding appears to involve three dropdown menus, a dialog box, and at least two UI controls.

In Emacs or Vim, it's a single line of code you add to your initialization file.

I think there may be different definitions of "easy" in play here. I'll concede that Visual Studio makes custom keybindings possible, but so does any text editor worthy of even momentary consideration as a professional tool.

And I'll take your challenge. Here's something I can do in Emacs: I can take a spreadsheet received from a client, full of intended configuration settings for a custom internal application. I can export it as CSV, load it in Emacs as such, and extract the relevant sections of the content into tables in a plaintext Org-mode document. I can then add a function to that document, in whatever language I choose, which will receive the contents of those tables as structured data in the language's own idiom, and generate the collection of complex SQL statements necessary to implement the desired configuration. From there I can decide whether I want this SQL script inserted into the document I'm writing, or written out to a file that I can copy to a remote host and feed to the SQL monitor. Or I can instead have Emacs itself connect to the target RDBMS and apply the configuration directly. Or any combination of those. And once the document's written, I can do all this with a single keystroke. Another single keystroke exports the document to HTML, so I can share it with the client to demonstrate exactly how their intent has been translated to reality, and with colleagues so they can see what's been done.

Perhaps that sounds fantastic to some. For me, it's Thursday before last. It took a little less than an hour.

I'm sure Visual Studio suits your needs quite well. I'm glad of that; everyone should have a tool that does what they need it to. But Visual Studio, from all I've seen of it, does very little to expand the scope of what you can do. Those of us who are fond of Emacs or Vim are so because, by comparison with something like Visual Studio, Emacs and Vim give you superpowers.

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "That's decidedly not true. Nor is this about customization of workflows. I am talking about actual unadulterated power to do things you cannot do in an IDE. All IDEs optimize for the average use case. If they do expose a set of advanced commands or transformations, they are hidden deep in the menus and what you can do with them is extremely rigid and limited. At most you have a few dozen commands (you would call t…

You are assuming I never use any GUI tools or never try IDEs. I do. I know how customizable most of them are (all except XCode which is absolute garbage). And you can spend a lot of time doing that (writing your own extensions or invoking those external command line tools on your text selections etc), but why bother spending time on that when I can use those tools directly in the command line? And if I'm going to wri…

Can you give me one example of a command line tool you wrote to help you get your work done?

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vim stands for vi improved and started on the Amega in 1991 so almost 25 years old. Certain people still use vi which was an improvement over ed August 1969 (Though I have been known to use ed in scripts from time to time).

Nonetheless he is right. As far as I remember Vim is based on the code of an editor that was similar to vi, and not vi itself.

Vi is a standard not a specific implementation. There was an original Vi, but since it's a standard unix tool, it got cloned by everyone who ever made a unix clone after it was added to BSD.

Vim can be invoked to conform to the vi standard, although usually it only gets used that way when a vim user is on an unfamiliar machine.

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#188

What does it mean to NeoVim? Does it affect it's development, split developers or anything? Is it good?

I have to think it's a direct response to neovim, and that competition between them is likely to be very good

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#189
post #127
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite as old (circa 1978) but TeX is still alive and well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX

Moreover, TeX has no serious competition (at least in the niche of typesetting mathematical documents). There are plenty of good text editors and IDEs to go around.

What about groff?

Re: Vim 8.0 is coming

#190
post #10
post #4

I have vim, neovim and emacs (and spacemacs) installed. Right now I'm trying to get into emacs a bit more. What's interesting to me, and the reason I try to keep up to date with the latest changes for all four editors, is that it's been now, what, 25 years (?) since emacs and vim started "competing" and they still are. I guess we could be saying the same in 10 years about firefox and chrome, but it still is amazing i…

I became an heavy Emacs user as I could not find the comfort of Borland IDEs in UNIX, as I started to use it. Since I moved away from C++ into Java and .NET land, never felt the need to use them any longer. And nowadays, with Qt Creator, Clion, xCode, AppCode and VS, I also don't feel the need of them when I need to go back to C++. It is very good to know the basics from plain Vi, because there are still commercial U…

I have used VS since I started working. I recently have dived head first into NVIM for my personal stuff. I love the fact that it doesn't have all the bloated crap that the full blown IDE's have. Sure some things like going to definitions are nice, but I rarely miss them. I love just the minimalism of a great text editor and there isn't a better one in my personal opinion than VIM or any of it's variants.
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