Talk:Vim (text editor)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Vim (text editor) article.
Article policies
Other languages WikiProject Echo has identified Vim (text editor) as a foreign language featured article. You may be able to improve this article with information from the French or German language Wikipedias.
For the use of Vim with Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Text editor support.

Contents

[edit] I'd like to add...

I'd Like to add the following but I'm now a good writer so I'd probably mess up the current article. Could some one do it for me? I got the info from an interview with Moolenaar http://e-zine.nluug.nl/hold.html?cid=180. -- Mr Cellophane

It was released in the early 1990s by Bram Moolenaar as "vi clone", ie a program similar to the text editor "vi", for Amiga computers. Initially the name stood for Vi IMitation but with the addition of new features the name has been changed to Vi IMproved.

The History section has been added which contains this information, albeit in a different form. -- Heptite 09:50, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] VIM vs. Emacs

VIM vs. Emacs: I don't think we need to go there. Both editors have their strong and weak points, but I think it's very hard to compare them directly. vi is used by people who start and exit their editor a hundred times a day, while Emacs tends to be used as a large operating environment. I can see any article on the subject becoming a religious war. -- Stephen Gilbert

Perhaps vi vs emacs should be part of the Flame war entry? DMD

Yes, I think that would be an excellent place for it. -- Stephen Gilbert

[edit] Bulleted list

The bulleted list of VIM features isn't really what we should expect in an encyclopedia article--i.e., it shouldn't be a list, it should be ordinary English prose sentences. --LMS

I disagree, it's perfectly fine as it is. --Eloquence 12:05 Jan 3, 2003 (UTC)
I dunno. This entry reads more like a press release than an encyclopedia entry. I might try a tweak or rewrite later. - David Gerard 16:09, Jan 9, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Contributors page

I found that someone had put up a link to a contributors page, on which he was the only person listed. This itself demonstrates the difficulties of trying to keep track of contributors by hand rather than automatically: unless (1) everyone voluntarily puts his or her own name on the list, or (2) someone tirelessly updates the list to make sure it's accurate, then the list is certainly going to be unreliable. There is another problem with such lists, and that is that it's really unnecessary. Why waste our time keeping track of contributors? Does it make them more motivated? No. Do we know what we've done? Yes, if we remember. Does anyone care what anyone else has done? Not really, except maybe when it's far above and beyond the call of duty (several names come to mind). In that case, simply being a participant is enough to confer community recognition and honor.  :-) --LMS

[edit] Charityware

¿Shouldn't the vim article at least mention the concept "charityware" and the poor children in Uganda?

Could do! - David Gerard 16:09, Jan 9, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] "Vim" as an English word

On the cleaning agent thing, "vim" used to be used (and still is to a certain extent, largely by older people) as an informal term meaning "with lots of energy and enthusiasm". It was a very common expression back around .. oh ... the middle years of the 20th century, I guess, and possibly earlier. Was the cleaning product named after the attitude, or the attitude after the cleaning product? Tannin 13:23, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Ah yes! Vim and vigor was a keen expression back in the day. - UtherSRG 13:48, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)
The English word (which goes back to 1843, according to Merriam-Webster OnLine) is apparently from Latin vim (accusative of vis). The cleaning product is surely named from the English word. --Zundark 13:47, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Ahh. Thankyou gentlemen! Tannin
Hmm. The OED deprecates the above derivation, surmising that the American originated word is just some interjection turned into an adverb. (from the 1850s) Which leaves me triply nonplussed, for I had genuinely thought "vimma" (meaning frenzy) to be a Finnish word with a long and distinguished pedigree... go figure! -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen 14:25, Jan 15, 2004 (UTC)
I just now ran into the word "vim" as a noun with this meaning, for the first time ever, in a PKD novel (The Unteleported Man to be precise) which was originally written 1964. So unless he was going for a subtle old-fashioned feel (totally lost on me), the word was still in use at least up to 1964. Does its definition deserve to go into the article? — Danc
Two things. One, my entire family still uses this word, so it's not completely out of common usage. Second, "vis" is, I believe, a verb in Latin--and even if it were a noun, it's accusative would be "vem" (the accusative ending is -em for third declension nouns). Hope this helps, [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 13:23, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I haven't studied any Latin so I couldn't say first-hand, although 1913 Webster and also the Pocket Oxford I have lying around here both seem to agree about it being accusative of the Latin noun vis. As far as modern usage — I found a representative sample (okay, it was only two people) of the baby boomer generation who both said that they had never heard of the word "vim", although one knew of the cleaning product brand. Maybe it's a regional thing? (I'm in Australia.) Irrespective of all that, I think the word "vim" meaning "enthusiasm, strength" should definitely go into the article ... — Danc
"Vim" is definately the accusative of the Latin "vis". See the Lewis & Short Latin dictionary & Allen and Greenough's New Latin Grammar.

[edit] 'vim' vs 'Vim'

I reverted the last change ("Vim, which stands for Vi Improved"). I'm of two minds about this: I agree with Pne that it's 'vi' not 'Vi'; on the other hand, the main help page in Vim (pressing F1 on v6.3 MS-Windows version) shows "VIM stands for Vi IMproved."

Thoughts?

DanielVonEhren 14:55, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)


This [article] tends to be my bible on the subject, and I think it should be Vim, because: - It's not an acronym, - It _is_ a proper noun.

I'd tend to take the same position as for perl: it's Perl the language, and perl the command interpreter (the language specification as opposed to the program you use to run Perl programs).

[edit] which language ?

In which language is Vim programmed ? Is there something called Vim programming language ? Jay 12:49, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Vim itself is written in C. As far as I know, the Vim scripting language has no name. Goplat 17:13, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
While it's true that technically there's no official name for the Vim scripting language, it's often called "VimL" in the vim-dev mailing list. -- Heptite 09:20, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
Regarding VimL, there's also this page: Exim Script Language --kAtremer 15:55, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
Yes, but see my objection to the use of "Exim" on the Talk:Exim Script language page -- Heptite (T) (C) (@) 18:28, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
That's exactly what I had in mind, and the Wikibooks page seems to need some correction. Afaik Vim documentation never advertises the language under any name of its own, and only refers to the commands as "given in Ex mode" --kAtremer 06:34, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Thumperward says "written in Vim's internal scripting language vimscript", but I did a grep on all the docs from 7.1 and found no such word... Mightn't we just say that the language has no official name and is sometimes referenced to as VimL, which it is, at least on Wikia? --kAtremer 14:46, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] External Links

I'm thinking this section really needs to be cleaned up, but I'm not entirely sure how to go about it without stepping on anybody's toes.

Several of these links appear to be outdated, trivial, etc. For example, the "Editing remote files with ViM and SCP/FTP" link should probably just be a tip on www.vim.org, and the "Vim Tutorial" looks more like a quick reference, of which there are many (including ":help quickref" within Vim). "Syntax highlighting in ViM, mappings and the vimrc file" and "ViM: Variable/Word completion, indenting, macros and function navigation" are links to a couple of the pages of a group of Vi/Vim "tutorials" on the same site (where they mistype the Vim name (it should be Vim (preferred), VIM, or vim))....

Heptite 22:48, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

I went ahead and cleaned this section up somewhat. I commented out but didn't delete the SCP/FTP link. -- Heptite (T) (C) (@) 08:44, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Guidelines

It's good that there are so many web pages out there dedicated to Vim in various ways ("cheat sheets", tips, etc.) but listing them all would be excessive and impactical. And, unfortunately, listing any that aren't "official" Vim pages tends to encourage others to list theirs, cluttering the "External links" section, which has been cleaned up more than once. There's also the External links guidelines. -- Heptite (T) (C) (@) 23:19, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was no consensus. —Nightstallion (?) 07:48, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

Vim (text editor) → Vi IMproved – Make the article title match the "expanded" name of Vim. (Currently Vi IMproved redirects to Vim (text editor).)

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~
  • Support -- Heptite (T) (C) (@) 22:15, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Conditional Support. Vi improved...? David Kernow 00:40, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose . It's not the common name for it, vim is, and the capitalization is only for marketing (not marketing since it's not some corporate identity or anything) If anything, it should be vi improved or VI improved. How would you feel about vim (software)? —Fitch 01:03, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose. vim is the common name. -- Eugene van der Pijll 10:03, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

[edit] Wikify

Since the subsections to Modal editing don't follow the manual of style I'd like to fix them. My problem is that I personally think it would help to somehow visually (other than the different headers) show the sub-modes of the six basic modes. For the time being indendation seems to be the only available and reasonable method within the wikipedia markup. (I had actually thought, in fact, that indentation was quite appropriate in this kind of context.) -- Heptite (T) (C) (@) 17:07, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Done

72.155.162.143 01:59, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Article for nerds header

I'm a user of vim windows, and my first text editor was vi. Yes, the first one I remember me editing with it using was vi, excepting probably the LOGO editor or the BASIC editor for Z80. And I have no more excuses for that fact that merely being a computer hater console lover, a late PC directed brain, a late Microsoft buyer but a soon XWindows lover, perhaps, or perhaps not, because everything is relative, even logic.

After this small introduction I would like to say that I would like to see a header like "Article for nerds" when this kind of articles is redacted coursing a certain style like this one has coursed. It is reflected perhaps in the kind of statements that induce interpretations like: "vim is easy, still not easy in the beggining, once you put the hands on it is like a bugatti, you start to accelerate in learning". Yes, this is false even for nerds. Why?, because the vim environment participates whole of the nerd individualistic spirit of "Do not code, recode. Do not invent, reinvent. Do not easy, difficult". If it would be easy some way, would be simple, and would be word for windows. So is not easy, is ... only.... "nerd diplomatically easy with a steep neerding curve".

Have told. (igjav)—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 212.51.45.134 (talk • contribs) .

+5, Insightful Tom Harrison Talk 13:50, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Learning curve citation needed?

I disagree that there needs to be a citation to the statement that Vim has a learning curve. While this is often stated by users there's no "official" comment to this effect that can be referenced. But it's one of the most common complaints from new users—even if they don't put it in those exact words, and those who stick with it often comment on vi/Vim's power. Also, the Editor war article has the same statement, uncited. -- Heptite (T) (C) (@) 03:49, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

I do think Vi's steep learning curve is common knowledge. Tom Harrison Talk 12:44, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

I placed the "citation needed" tag. Sorry for the confusion. My issue is not with the steep learning curve for beginners, but the confident and self-serving manner in which the later part of the sentence states that this in overcome. (Honestly, a great deal of the article reads like someone lifted a Vim readme document.) --Charles Gaudette 12:58, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vi IMproved vs. Vi Improved

The edit by Ptkfgs of "Vi IMproved" to "Vi Improved", while technically correct according to one part of the Manual of Style, may not actually be appropriate. If you look at the Vim documentation, in most places it expands Vim's full name to "Vi IMproved", and Bram Moolenaar, the author of Vim, almost always writes it formally as "Vi IMproved". Perhaps the introduction should read "Vim, also known as Vi IMproved, ..." and the other instances of "Vi Improved" could be restored to "Vi IMproved". -- Heptite (T) (C) (@) 04:10, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Oops. I went to get rid of the bold. I've restored the capitalization. Sorry! —ptk✰fgs 13:39, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] date error?

VIM Release dates show 5.8 was release before 5.7!?!?

June 24, 2000 5.7 New syntax files, bug fixes, etc. May 31, 2000 5.8 New syntax files, bug fixes, etc.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.239.2.250 (talk)

Fixed -- Heptite (T) (C) (@) 02:59, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] not written in the formal tone

Sections of this article refer to "you" and read like a tutorial. dr.ef.tymac 01:57, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I added an inappropriate person for that "you". -- ReyBrujo 05:40, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The most popular editors??

Flamewars aside, this is a ridiculous claim. Like all free software projects, there's no way to judge if vi or vim are the most popular editors simply because it's impossible to get accurate statistics on the number of vi or vim users (such is the very nature of free software). People could get vi from a distro, build from source, get it from a friend, and any sort of "random sampling" based on questionnaires is doomed to failure, since obtaining a true random sample of users who might or might not consider themselves vim users is bound to be biased. The supposed "citation" from Linux Journal that proves that vim is the most popular is biased towards readers of that publication.

In short, I'm removing the claim of "most popular". At best, it's simply popular. Swap 00:35, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Collaborative Editing

The people at vi-improved.com are thinking about a collaborative editing feature in VIM. Check out their Wiki page about their ideas.

http://docsynch.sourceforge.net/index.php?page%5B%5D=6.Implementations&page%5B%5D=2.VIM

http://www.vi-improved.org/wiki/index.php/TunnelDataInCommands

These might need to be added to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_text_editors page if the developers put this feature in. Currently VIM doesn't do this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.90.222.215 (talk)

[edit] Potential Merge of Cream into Vim

I've added a tag to the Cream (software) page indicating that it could be merged into the Vim article. Cream is described as a configuration of the Vim editor and as such it is probably not notable in its own right but instead it could be a part of the Vim article.--Mendors 02:50, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

If the Cream article isn't going to be expanded, I agree. But if there's a real possibility people will add to it I'd say it should remain a separate article. Either way I think it would help if references were added. -- Heptite (T) (C) (@) 08:32, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
(Cream author here) I'd prefer not mucking up the Vim page with Cream. Most diehard Vim users do not count it as a valid extension, and all references to Cream would eventually be edited out anyway. Plus the projects clearly have different usability goals, one could say nearly diametrically opposed. :) Digitect 18:43, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
If -- in the author's words -- "most diehard Vim users do not count it as a valid extension", and "all references to Cream would eventually be edited out anyway"...what makes this project notable enough to merit its own article?
...In lieu of that discussion, I agree with Heptite -- if references can be found and the article expanded, I say keep it separate. If not, merge. 216.42.134.6 17:00, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

The Cream article does not assert notability. It seems irrelevant here and unnecessary there; I have nominated it for speedy deletion. —ptk✰fgs 19:40, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GPL-compatible

Could someone find a good ref for this? The best I can do is the zillion or so comments on debian-legal during 2002, but that's far too much work to follow. Chris Cunningham 12:06, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Type ":help uganda" within Vim and search for "Richard Stallman":
- According to Richard Stallman the Vim license is GNU GPL compatible.
  A few minor changes have been made since he checked it, but that should not
  make a difference.
There are also other references to the GPL in the license itself. -- Heptite (T) (C) (@) 18:45, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Vi IMproved vs. vi improved

Thumperward insists that "Vi IMproved", which is the official way the longer version of Vim's name is written, should be written as "vi improved" due to the Manual of Style. I don't agree with this for two reasons:

  1. It is the official way the name is written and the article should reflect that.
  2. The Manual of Style is a guideline, not a policy. In other words, they're not "do or die" rules. There are always times when the you shouldn't just blindly follow the guidelines, and this is definitely one of them. (See the notice about this on the top of the page itself—especially the bit about exceptions, which links to Ignore all rules.)

For an example, see the Unix article—note that Unix and UNIX are both correct, but UNIX is used in several places in the article despite the fact that it "violates" the Manual of Style (UNIX is not an acronym). -- Heptite (T) (C) (@) 19:50, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

"Vi IMproved" isn't, to my knowledge, an official title of any sort; it's simply a common typographical emphasis of the letters used in forming "Vim". if there's reason to believe "Vi IMproved" is an offical title, as opposed to a common typographical representation, then I'm cool with it being represented as such. The Unix article does a very good job of separating the two, even though in Unix's case there's also an additional consideration in that UNIX is a trademark. Chris Cunningham 19:56, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps you're referring to something other than the fact that Bram's used that "wacky" capitalization almost exclusively for more than ten years. Looking at vim 7.1 sources, the only exception (other than referring to Steve Oualline's book) appears in a comment in termlib.c. Digressing to trademarks will not help here (vim-the-editor is not, the last I recalled). You should make it clearer how exacting your criteria are. Tedickey 20:14, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
To help get started, read the manpage (for vim):
vim - Vi IMproved, a programmers text editor
and inform Bram that you have found a problem with his documentation. Tedickey 20:21, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
MOS:TM applies to kooky capitalisation in manuals as much as it does registered trademarks. At some point, you should really read the Manual of Style. Chris Cunningham 20:29, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
That's about 200 occurrences (current code base) in manuals, code and supporting documentation. You really ought to report your findings directly to Bram, letting him know your opinion of his design choice. Tedickey 20:34, 20 October 2007 (UTC)


Yes, unless I'm badly mistaken "Vi IMproved" is the official "long" version of the Vim name. The included documentation for Vim uses "Vi IMproved" whenever it has the longer version of the name (which, I'll admit, isn't super frequently). As a second example, see the title of a book for vim: Vi IMproved—Vim by Steve Oualline (ISBN 0735710015). Also, it's written as "Vi IMproved" in pretty much all of the source files, and on Bram's web pages.
Though this can hardly be used as a hard citation, Bram has at least once agreed that "Vi IMproved" is the preferred way it's written within the Vim discussion mailing lists, and I'd say it's generally become the accpeted form of the name within the Vim community.
At one point I had put [sic] into the article itself beside the "Vi IMproved" but it got removed in a later edit, and I didn't see a reason to make an issue of it as I could see arguments both for and not having it. Perhaps its inclusion should be revisited?
(To make things even more fun, he's also said that "Vim", "VIM" and "vim" are all acceptable versions of the short name, but "Vim" is preferred, with "vim" being the second most preferred form.) -- Heptite (T) (C) (@) 20:44, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm cool with the reference. Let's add it. Chris Cunningham 00:35, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
Right. I understand that due to technical limitations, wikipedia topics have limited capitalization. But if we're going to start hacking up the names given by the authors of the topic material to suit a volatile "MoS", there's nothing to be done except document this in the upstream sources, noting that what you read in wikipedia is misleading at best. Tedickey 20:51, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Picture

The attached screenshot is way too big. I would like someone to replace it awitha a screenshot of a smaller window. 192.114.175.2 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 15:28, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

It's a text editor; it needs to show a reasonable amount of text. 80×40 is fairly sensible. EdC (talk) 01:08, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Preview release

AFAIK "7.1.211" is not a preview release of Vim but a patchlevel to a stable release. --kAtremer (talk) 13:47, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

True, but since there aren't any "official" binary releases of patchlevels—just major/minor releases—it sortof qualifies. When there's a 7.2 alpha/beta this field will be updated to reflect that. -- Heptite (T) (C) (@) 16:18, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
"Official" binaries is fairly unpopular concept in open source/unix software I suppose... Anyway, one can't preview any new features with those patches, so it's better not to mislead anyone. --kAtremer (talk) 17:25, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
Actually, with Vim "official" binary releases are those that Bram has created/announced and put on the official FTP and web sites. Regarding new features, there are sometimes patches to non-alpha/beta versions of Vim that include new features (although they're never features that require significantly large core changes to Vim).
I think the real problem here is that, while the patches aren't really "preview" releases in the sense of alpha/betas, you do have to be a more advanced or at least determined user to obtain them and create an executable from them, or wait for the next major/minor release to get a precompiled binary, so it can be argued either way. -- Heptite (T) (C) (@) 22:31, 4 February 2008 (UTC)