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Remove Ex-Mode from Neovim

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Re: Remove Ex-Mode from Neovim

#81

Post by tarruda »

Slackwise wrote: post #15

While I don't particularly care for ex-mode, I think it's weird to be calling it Neo 'vim' without it. If it's going to become more of a radical departure from Vim and start omitting features as well as adding, I would rather they change the name of the project instead, one that alludes to its Vim heritage rather than having a prefix that means 'new'. Is it a new version of Vim? Or an editor that started as a fork of…

I'm the project founder and also dislike it. I admit it was one of the first things that came to my head(The name was inspired by some of @Shougo plugins). If I knew the project would get so popular, I would have put more thought into it. Too late now :(

I hope eventually the community will just use the 'nvim' abbreviation to refer to Neovim, just like 'vim' is 'vi improved' abbreviated

Re: Remove Ex-Mode from Neovim

#82

Post by saidajigumi »

dllthomas wrote: post #60
saidajigumi wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not removing command line mode , they're removing interactive Ex-mode[1]. Batch ex-mode from the command line (nvim -e) stays. From the research the team has done, most users 1) don't even know about it, 2) are annoyed when it is triggered by accident, and 3) when they do know about it, just remap it. And yes, there are a few users of ex-mode out there. A huge part of good design is being able to make good (a…

I don't know that there is any good reason to allow a move from visual mode to ex mode (or vice-versa). I do think that ex mode is very important - though I would expect you could implement it as its own UI over msgpack?

As neovim matures I think the opportunities for rich extension and scripting are going to blow away anything vi/vim users have ever had. I think ex-mode could be reimplemented as you suggest, or we'll end up with other awesome approaches that were simply unthinkable in the old architecture and codebase.

Re: Remove Ex-Mode from Neovim

#83

Post by nXqd »

gfodor wrote: post #68
otikik wrote: post #39

This is like dropping support for Internet Explorer 6 in a website - code gets cleaner at the expense of a minor group of users getting a worse experience. I think it is a good tradeoff.

More like IE3. Nobody uses ex mode.

It's not true. Some still uses it extensively in the case of editing the last commands. But there is alternative way.

I am happy that they will remove this mode in the future :)

Re: Remove Ex-Mode from Neovim

#84

Post by dllthomas »

saidajigumi wrote: post #82
dllthomas wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know that there is any good reason to allow a move from visual mode to ex mode (or vice-versa). I do think that ex mode is very important - though I would expect you could implement it as its own UI over msgpack?

As neovim matures I think the opportunities for rich extension and scripting are going to blow away anything vi/vim users have ever had. I think ex-mode could be reimplemented as you suggest, or we'll end up with other awesome approaches that were simply unthinkable in the old architecture and codebase.

It looks like tarruda explicitly says, "As for the ex command-line utility, that can easily be implemented as separate program that talks to nvim via msgpack-rpc".

This seems like a reasonable separation of concerns.

Re: Remove Ex-Mode from Neovim

#85

Post by tonyhb »

nicwest wrote: post #36

I have been using Ex mode for it's REPL like qualities while learning vimscript, it's a useful feature if you are writing vim plugins or doing complex search/replace operations. Will a similar conversation happen with Replace mode? I use this mode less than Ex mode and it has a useful key bind (R) that could be recycled.

But uh, with the python, ruby, golang, lua (or whatever else has been chosen) integration do you really need vimscript any more?

Re: Remove Ex-Mode from Neovim

#86

Post by ritchiea »

stepanbujnak wrote: post #20
krick wrote: post #6

Removing pretty powerful feature just because author of fork doesn't use it sounds… well, actually author of fork can remove whatever he likes, but presenting neovim like "refactord vim with more features" isn't fair or even plausible in this case. And for what reasons? Oh, I see, it makes code complicated. Did he think vim'c codebase is scary for no reason? Removing all the code from vim would be the ultimate simpli…

The project aims to refactor vim's codebase to simplify development and allow new developers to join in by removing old, deprecated code. It doesn't say it is supposed to be 1:1 replacement only with newer code, and from what I've read on both their GitHub issues page and Hacker News, 99% of Vim users actually don't use Ex-mode. There is simply no point spending time and resources to keep in in the tree for the 1% of…

Or they can fork neovim and start a neovim-with-exmode project!

Re: Remove Ex-Mode from Neovim

#87

Post by Slackwise »

tarruda wrote: post #81
Slackwise wrote: post #15

While I don't particularly care for ex-mode, I think it's weird to be calling it Neo 'vim' without it. If it's going to become more of a radical departure from Vim and start omitting features as well as adding, I would rather they change the name of the project instead, one that alludes to its Vim heritage rather than having a prefix that means 'new'. Is it a new version of Vim? Or an editor that started as a fork of…

I'm the project founder and also dislike it. I admit it was one of the first things that came to my head(The name was inspired by some of @Shougo plugins). If I knew the project would get so popular, I would have put more thought into it. Too late now :( I hope eventually the community will just use the 'nvim' abbreviation to refer to Neovim, just like 'vim' is 'vi improved' abbreviated

> If I knew the project would get so popular, I would have put more thought into it.

It's alright. You're doing a great job though, regardless. I really can't wait till it's done!

> I hope eventually the community will just use the 'nvim'

Is there a chance the project might choose a different name? If not, nvim isn't so bad. It could be better, though. A good name is important.

Re: Remove Ex-Mode from Neovim

#88

Post by scott_karana »

tarruda wrote: post #81
Slackwise wrote: post #15

While I don't particularly care for ex-mode, I think it's weird to be calling it Neo 'vim' without it. If it's going to become more of a radical departure from Vim and start omitting features as well as adding, I would rather they change the name of the project instead, one that alludes to its Vim heritage rather than having a prefix that means 'new'. Is it a new version of Vim? Or an editor that started as a fork of…

I'm the project founder and also dislike it. I admit it was one of the first things that came to my head(The name was inspired by some of @Shougo plugins). If I knew the project would get so popular, I would have put more thought into it. Too late now :( I hope eventually the community will just use the 'nvim' abbreviation to refer to Neovim, just like 'vim' is 'vi improved' abbreviated

Considering that there's already an "nvi", that might be confusing... but I agree, a name change may be warranted. (personally I like it)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvi

Re: Remove Ex-Mode from Neovim

#89

Post by unclebunkers »

Slackwise wrote: post #61
unclebunkers wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want to change the name from neovim because they want to remove functionality that I'm guessing maybe 1% of the users use regularly. Even though for 99%, neovim is vim only modernized and cleaned up. It's illogical as you're doing a disservice to the users, and neovim is a clear name that describes what it is. New vim.

- It is a fork of Vim. - It is omitting some features. - It is adding a number of high level features. - It will not be fully backwards compatible. Prefixing 'new' to the name of the forked project is as lazy as it can get [1]. 'Neo' is one step from that. Vim itself wouldn't be a good name if it was just meaning "Vi iMproved", but 'Vim' is also a dictionary word meaning "energy; enthusiasm". A positive dictionary wo…

Vim wasn't backwards compatible with vi. And your reasoning lacks a logical basis, with all points being subjective.

Re: Remove Ex-Mode from Neovim

#90

Post by thegeomaster »

goldfeld wrote: post #74
thegeomaster wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested to hear why you're using evil-mode instead of vim if that's how you feel. I'm using vim with slimv for Lisp hacking at the moment and I have to admit that there are some whoopsies, but not enough to make me learn to use a whole new editor :)

Well, rant and occasional surprise aside, I've found evil-mode to truly be a better implementation of vi than vim itself, at least where it concerns me (as formerly a pretty advanced vim user and plugin developer, it took me some adapting to stop using all the ex vim idioms and the like.) It's faster to handle big files and execute macros, overall snappier and has a profoundly better %s///g with real time preview. I…

Thanks for the insight, much appreciated.

Out of curiosity, what do you mean by 'verbosity' in this case? I just Googled and it looks like Elisp uses the same (lambda (arg) form) syntax, like CL---is this what you're referring to?

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