URL:         http://www.math.fu-berlin.de/~guckes/vim/comments.html
URL:         https://www.vim8.org/comments.html (mirror)
Created:     Fri Mar 05 19:00:00 CET 1999
Last update: Thu Mar 11 11:11:11 CET 1999

Vim HomePage is down - Comments

On March 4th I had replaced the Vim HomePage with this note:

        Vim has become too big. Please use Emacs.  Thankyou.

I thought that this was a humorous thing - but quite a few people took is *very* seriously.

Anyway, the background of it all was meant quite seriously. As I was asked to explain, here is a summary:

Summary

I was very disappointed by the recent development of Vim. So I stated my views on the vim-dev mailing list, but the reponse was, um, not quite not the kind I had expected. So I put up the above note for a day.

Seeing the responses from startled users who just wanted to look up some info on the vim pages, I put the homepage back into place as I could see that this was not helpful to them at all. I apologize to them for the caused inconvenience.

However, I would like to defend my position. Please allow me.

Statement on current development

Recent Vim has lost the focus on adding/improving the features of editing on terminals, ie the kind of editing that would work on all installations and thus benefit all users.

My quest is to help enhance the features of Vim that can be used on (almost) *every* terminal.

Please note that I do not try to avoid development of the other development, especially not of any GUI features at all.

Imagine all the people

Imagine all the people using GUIs. Well, we'd still need to improve the commands and features hat work on "texts".

A GUI can be helpful, but icons are just an interface to the commands. They do can improve the handling of commands, but they do no improve the commands,

All those added features do add the size of Vim, of course. In the end you might get to see this announcement to a future Vim:

System requirements: Vim does not run on WindowsCE any more, nor on a 386, 486, or Pentium. If you want to make use the new GUI features of Vim6 then you need a faster processor, a bigger graphics card, at least a 21" monitor and a soundblaster compatible card."

I certainly do not want to see this happen.

Developers!

Please, developers, let these be the priorities of the development:

ex/vi and their options
documentation
support for multibyte characters
GUI
everything else

Why? Well, Ex/Vi commands and options come first because, after all, Vim should try to be as compatible or "true" to Vi as possible. The documentation should be up-to-date always. (More links and and examples would be nice to avoid FAQs.) The support for multibyte characters should benefit all users around the world. (English, ASCII, and C are not spoken by everyone.) The GUI certainly is wanted by many people as "GUIs are nice".

NOTE: It's a *suggestion*, still.

I know I cannot force anyone to do anything. I can only hope that my suggestion is heard.

I must admit that replacing the Vim HomePage with this text was certainly not the best way to get listened to.

And although I could have done without the most repsonses, I hope that I can put the experience to some use. This is a first attempt at this.

Example: Scrollbars

Let me give one example that I keep thinking about when the topic "terminal vs GUI" arises. Many have told me that a "scrollbar" is such a nice feature to have as they show how the current window's contents compare to the size of the whole buffer. That's true, but shouldn't there be some kind of support for this on terminals, too? Of course you could try to use the characters on screen, but let's face it - the graphics would suck.

However, the information value of scroll bars can easily be replaced by listing the first and last line on screen together with their percentages:

Example: Vim shows this on For a buffer of 50 lines that is shown in a 20 line window, the display "L23-42 %46-86" says that lines 23 to 42 are shown (together with their corresponsdant percentage values). Btw: Percentages are far better than scroll bars as you'd have to guess the exact values! My point: Let's improve the commands and the display of the "vim for terminals". Then every vim user benefits from this, not only the folks who happen to use Windows2000 with SpecialTerm, editing UnknownLanguage files with a special font in their ExtraMenu.

"So - what would you implement first, then?"

Thanks for asking.

The best thing of vi always was "speed". So I personally hope for improvements to the speed of commands (esp substitution and global commands) and screen updates (esp of syntax coloring).

Vertical split of windows (to allow comparison of code and texts) seems to be a natural request. i have always missed this.

Substitution on text blocks is another feature I often need. Other vi clones have this already. maybe it could be added quickly?!

An extra line for feedback message and "online tips" would be nice for newbies. Something like "pico" and "nvi" have - if this is ever possible with Vim.

Support for multibyte characters is vital! There are so many human languages out there that support for one-byte characters just is not enough. The is a strong demand for this and it is time to put the patches for Farsi, Chinese, hangul (Korean0, Japanese into Vim. (I must admit, though, that I cannot see how much work this will have. Someone told me that this would not be too hard. Well, I hope so.)

Folding and configurable auto-indenting are for programmers mostly, but these can be put to use for many other texts, too. As for folding, however, I think that requires a lot of changes. Support for multibyte characters should come before that.

Look back in Anger?

No, not really. It's the prospect of things to come that scares me.

Back with vim-4.6 (the final release of vim-4) I was drooling for the syntax coloring. Vi on color! Editing LaTeX the right way, I thought. And, man, is it GOOD!

But with the development of the syntax coloring also came the code for GUI. Although I was happy for the users of the windows version, I always feared that this will add more problems and draw away the power of development from the core features.

Alas, I was right.

I had wished that Vim-5 only added the syntax coloring. No more. Then the next step might for Vim-6 habe been the GUIs on top.

The feedback has shown me that many users would have been content with that, too. This raises the question of a rewrite.

Rewrite Vim?

Should vim-4.6 be rewritten? Should vim-5.3 be downsized? Hard to say.

One thing is sure, though: Many users are still using vim-3.0 and vim-4.6 because it is much smaller than vim-5. And they are reluctant to upgrade to vim-5.3 because the difference in size does not give them a lot more features that they can make use of. However, the "copyright" is still with Bram. He is to decide which patches I do respect that.

And, as you may know, Vim is "charityware" whose benefit is for sick children in Uganda. And I'd like to keep supporting Vim for them, too.

"Who's fat?"

I was asked how "big" Vim is now. Well, Vim's size depends on the compile options and the libraries you use, of course. So I'll just give an answer for the precompiled binaries for DOS and Windows:

    DOS16   430288  08-30-98  22:19   vim-5.3/vim.exe
    DOS32   597504  08-30-98  22:19   vim-5.3/vim.exe
    WIN32   571904  08-30-98  22:19   vim-5.3/vim.exe

Feedback

Many users responded because they saw a link to this very page from the main vim page and they told me that they missed the discusssion on the vim-dev mailing list as they are not subscribed.

The feedback so far has shown all sorts of reponses. So taking a poll on this would just be another vote, and I do not have the time to summarize it, anyway. I therefore would like to all of you who have not responded yet to make yourself heard on the newsgroup comp.editors which is usually simpler to use than the vim maillists as you can post to it without subscribing by email, post, and unsubscribe again.

Yes, I still read comp.editors, of course, but I will probably just forward requests from there to the vim help mailing list instead of answering them myself. My focus now shall be to work on summarizing the hundreds of tips I have compiled to make up for better VIM FAQ and Vim HowTo documents.

Windows users ("I have to work on Windows - there is choice here at the office") and those who use laptops prefer the GUI version, of course. But many people are using Vim for its speed on the keyboard, who do not "give a damn" about icons, menus, and mice.

Someone mentioned that the GUI version has less overhead in producing the color on the terminal, as opposed to the use of "vim in xterm". But he does not use menu, dialogs, scroll bars, or the mouse, either. ;-)

Another user stated that one advantage of the GUI version is that it gives better colors as the color terminals vary in color.

Credits and Disclaimer

I'd like to thank those who sent replies with helpful comments and words of support. And I hope that those who felt personally attacked with my general remarks will try and understand my point of view.

The consensus is that Vim is too good to ever die and that the community will carry it on, whatever happens.

To all - thanks! :-)

Send feedback on this page to

Sven Guckes [email protected]