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Archive 1

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)

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

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)

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

"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
Danc that link is broken. Here is a working definition. I think it should go into the article if we can find a source saying that's why that particular contraction was used. Which I think is likely because why contract Vi IMproved? Why not Vii or something else? Mchcopl (talk) 18:57, 26 December 2018 (UTC)
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.

'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).

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)

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)

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)

Despite the good intentions of the editors, the external links section has reached an unfortunate state. There are tiny open source projects with more useful external link info than the Vim page has. This is not ideal. While appropriate under the mission of the Wikipedia, there are no links at all to any helpful tutorials on how to use Vim, which is especially troublesome since Vim is quite difficult to pick up and the existing links are not beginner friendly. Efforts to link to a popular and highly rated video tutorial were taken down and the poster accused of promoting a blog (when actually the links were on YouTube and the video did not promote a blog). The argument that since there are too many tutorials to list any is not sensible. The appropriate action would be to list a handful of popular text and video tutorials. 9 March 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.192.241.232 (talk) 22:06, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The Vim article itself already points out the vimtutor and the Vim user manual. I actually watched that video and in my opinion it was not very good--although quite a bit better than some of the other video tutorials I've seen--the vimtutor covers the same material and more in a way that lets the user do it at their pace and "interactively". If you don't like the vimtutor, Bram Moolenaar has asked people to improve it and send him patches.
In addition, the first time you start Vim you should notice the intro text, which tells you to do ":help". If you do there's a little over a page of text introducing you to the help system, and then a basics section including links to quick reference and the tutor. (But yes, perhaps the Vim web site's documentation section should mention the tutor.)
I fail to see how this is too difficult, it merely requires the user to pay attention.
Also, there will probably never be agreement on which tutorial(s) should be linked. In the past there were too many links to tutorials, many of which could be argued to be popular/liked.
-- Heptite (T) (C) (@) 02:25, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

This can be happily and systematically resolved by identifying top resources according to multiple search engines and social bookmarking sites, as has been done in the current revision (consulting delicious, reddit, Google, Yahoo). If it is limited to five entries per category, the Vim page will become more useful to the readership while remaining uncluttered. We need to keep in mind our objective of making the Vim page as useful as possible for the readers.

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)

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 ~~~~
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.

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)

Done

72.155.162.143 01:59, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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://wiki.riteme.site/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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

splash screen?

I just uploaded Image:VIM splash.png and I was wondering if it could be used in this article (for a very arrogant/vain example of what I mean, see vi's infobox). --Thinboy00's sockpuppet alternate account 05:39, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't really see how it would benefit the article, but if you can find a way to integrate it usefully be bold and add it. -- Heptite (T) (C) (@) 12:35, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

History section: name change from Vi IMitation to Vi IMproved

As of April 23, 1993, Version 1.27 of vim, Bram Moolenaar was still refering to vim's full name as "Vi IMitation".

Quote from the History section of the main article:

Date Version Changes and additions
1992 1.22 Port to Unix. Vim now competes with vi. This was when Vim became Vi IMproved

The source document cited http://www.free-soft.org/FSM/english/issue01/vim.html does suggest that the name change was done at this time. From the cited document:

By version 1.22 Vim included more features than Vi. I decided to change the name from "Vi IMitation" to "Vi IMproved".

However, that is ambiguous. He does not actually say that he changed the name at that time. He only says that by version 1.22 Vim had more features than Vi. That may have been the motivation, but the actual decision to change the name appears to have come later. Note that I have not figured out when the actual name change occurred, but the following Usenet post suggests it came after version 1.27 but at or before version 2.0:

Google Groups Vi IMitation editor v1.27 

Newsgroups: comp.sources.misc
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1993 17:17:16 GMT
Subject: v37i001: vim - Vi IMitation editor v1.27, Part01/24

The Vim reference manual 2.0 states the following:

Vim stands for Vi IMproved. It used to be Vi IMitation, but that does not really cover it anymore.

Google Groups Vi IMitation editor, v2.0 

Newsgroups: comp.sources.misc
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 1993 03:41:36 GMT
Local: Mon, Dec 20 1993 8:41 pm
Subject: v41i050: vim - Vi IMitation editor, v2.0, Part00/25

--Noah (talk) 21:29, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

The recent changes to the "Modal editing" section have made me wonder whether the whole section is worded appropriately. I don't have any precise suggestions at the moment, but here are some thoughts.

I'm as rabid as any Vim user, and am always in normal mode except when actually inserting stuff, but I think the article should just frankly acknowledge that a new user is going to be totally and justifiably confused by modal editing (we can assume "new user" means new to vi-like editors).

If it were possible without too much WP:OR, it might be helpful to outline why modal editing is useful.

Is the "Some variations of vi" para appropriate in a Vim article? How does it help? --Johnuniq (talk) 23:43, 22 October 2008 (UTC)


Moved page vim to vim (disambiguation)

Because I thought, that Vim is treated unfairly as compared to Emacs or *even* Notepad on Wikimedia search engine ;) Kazkaskazkasako (talk) 17:04, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm a Vim fan too, and the unfair treatment is unfortunate! However that is no reason to move it out of disambiguation. See Talk:Vim_(disambiguation). Jay (talk) 11:45, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

intro is missing: macros, Windows user base, Normal mode/modal text editing

As compared to Emacs (maybe even Notepad), this article is not as long, as qualitative, as quantitative! Whereas I would guess it is only due to history:


Text editor Birthday Main features
Emacs 1976 macros, doesn't have modal editing, keyboard shortcuts, GNU license, everything can be done with any kind of text, even UTF8 (which means all supported languages for which there is some software, Emacs would also have support for this language, or to put it in other way: if there's a Wikipedia in that language, then Emacs supports that language (even though in some cases it's a very partial support)
Vim 1991 THIS article is about this program: MAIN alternative/competitor to Emacs (Editor wars)
Notepad 1985 inferior as compared to Vim or Emacs, simple enough for *everybody* to use, shallow learning curve

Kazkaskazkasako (talk) 21:05, 23 January 2009 (UTC) (I should have signed, but forgot...)

It is my opinion that no tutorial links should be added to this article, because then people will want to add more and there will be debates over which is the best.

Most importantly, Vim comes with a tutorial, both in the form of "vimtutor" and the user manual.

For this reason, I believe 90.192.241.79's addition of a video tutorial should be removed, but I removed it once already and 90.192.241.119 (same user?) added it back—I don't want to hit the three revert rule.

-- Heptite (T) (C) (@) 07:47, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

probably the same user (same network mask, dynamic IP). Tedickey (talk) 11:01, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Comment on ports

The 16-bit ports were abandoned several years ago, but the wording of the paragraph under "Features and improvements over vi" implies that it is current. (The paragraph is in an unexpected place, since it is unrelated to the title of the subsection). The promotional comment about "shipped with every copy" is redundant as well Tedickey (talk) 09:34, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Linux Journal Citation

While Linux Journal is a notable publication/web site, and vim is a popular editor (and basically in a constant editor war with emacs), the citation given is A) the second paragraph of the article and B) from 2003. I'm not saying that makes it bad, but several editors that are currently popular weren't on the radar at that time. It might be a notable citation, but it hardly seems like it belongs were it is. 67.162.113.118 (talk) 04:24, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Mention vim-nox?

  1. Should the article on Vim not mention vim-nox? I ran across it on my Linux machine, and wondered if it meant "no executables" (not!) and so thought the sentence might be added saying (in section Availability): On any operating system without X Window System libraries, Vim may be available from vim-nox.
  2. It was reverted for the reason: not really relevant, since vim and the gui versions have always been distinct binaries. But X offers Windows that are terminals as well as GUIs.

— CpiralCpiral 22:39, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

That happens to be a package name, which makes it problematic: (a) there are no standards for package names, making it specific to one or more niches (and ultimately off-topic) and (b) as I recall, vim.org doesn't define a list. TEDickey (talk) 23:00, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

History Section Citation

There is a "citation needed tag" under the history header. I do not know if man pages should qualify, but the man page for Vim on my system (dated 2006 Apr 11) says:

AUTHOR Most of Vim was made by Bram Moolenaar, with a lot of help from others. See ":help credits" in Vim. Vim is based on Stevie, worked on by: Tim Thompson, Tony Andrews and G.R. (Fred) Walter. Although hardly any of the original code remains.

A citation for the manpage should note that "according to vim's manpage", etc. The tag on the statement is because there's no third-party source citing Stevie's original authorship (and the "created by" in this topic goes beyond the comment in the manpage, which is somewhat ambiguous). A good source would address these points (as well as giving dates for these facts) TEDickey (talk) 21:02, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

base on (sic)

The idiom can mean conceptual or concrete, depending on the context. (for example http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/base-on). In this topic, it is unambiguously the former TEDickey (talk) 23:30, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Other languages have a different meaning for this word and the related word there means based on the real thing if there is not the additional "on the ideas". A person who reads the text without having knowledge on vim will thus most likely get a wrong impression. People who write text in english should know that english is a highly ambiguous language with lots of context sensitive meanings and avoid non-straightforward text. Schily (talk) 09:48, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

No Mention of Bill Joy's Work

While there is a wiki page on vi itself, it surprises me that Bill Joy's original work and contribution to Vim isn't mentioned anywhere in the article. There is a whole new generation of Linux users who are exposed to vim and don't even remember vi for the amazing piece of software that it was in its time.

72.52.99.18 (talk) 17:31, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

see-also me-toos

See-also's aren't intended for promotional editing. The given addition is orders of magnitude less notable than vimperator. Using the same rationale, every see-also in vimperator "should be" added here, just in case TEDickey (talk) 08:04, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure what is "promotional" about it. Pentadactyl is the more Vim-like fork of Vimperator and it isn't less notable than Vimperator. These are not links to external sites, but links to relevant Wikipedia pages, so I don't know how they could be considered promotional. I have no affiliation with any of the mentioned projects. Let99 (talk) 20:28, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
On the one hand, you state that your edits are not promotional. On the other hand, this edit and comment is undeniably promotional. TEDickey (talk) 10:23, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
A "promotional" link on Wikipedia is a link to an external website or a Wikipedia page about a topic that the author is affiliated with. Neither is is the case here. The addition of Pentadactyl makes the article more complete. One can't mention Vimperator without Pentadactyl, or if we only list one, then it should be Pentadactyl and not Vimperator, because Pentadactyl is more true to Vim commands. Let99 (talk) 06:09, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
You are still contradicting yourself by selectively interpreting things. If you concentrated on finding reliable sources for instance, you would be making different comments TEDickey (talk) 08:23, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
Would having "Vim-inspired browser extensions: Vimperator, Pentadactyl, Vimium etc." be more acceptable? This way, they're all bunched together and none pops out any more than the other. Skl (talk) 17:03, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
Given the article tags on Vimium, and the weak sourcing for the other two, the notion of making a list in the see-also doesn't sound like an improvement, particularly since Vimperator, Pentadactyl are supposedly the "same source". (The see-alsos in these topics also have links to completely unrelated topics - so the same issue mentioned here applies to those topics). TEDickey (talk) 01:09, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
Should Web browser extensions that simulate Vim controls be included in the article, yes or no? (I vote for "yes", because they are relevant to Vim's influence over user interfaces beyond simply text editing.) If so, we should list all of the major ones. If not, then we should remove all of them. Let99 (talk) 22:03, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Removed last para in the lead

I removed the recently introduced last paragraph as unsourced advocacy. I tried to find sources for the assertions without success and since it seemed non-neutral, I elected to boldly remove it. I did find a sourced statement regarding the advantage of vi for touch typists through the home row, and added that to the interface section. If others can find reliable sources for the deleted para, feel free to re-add it. --Mark viking (talk) 00:11, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

The removed paragraph was worse than biased, it was definitely wrong as vim of course was never designed. Vim is rather an imperfect vi clone - the design was done by Bill Joy for vi. But I can also confirm that typing speed is not a result of the vi interface but a result of hard learning. I use ved since 32 years (see schily-*.tar-bz2 bundle for a recent ved version) - an editor with a better learning curve than vi and I am forced to use vi from time to time. I am much faster with ved and I am even asked by people why I could be faster than vi users. So my question is of course also why there is no ved article in Wikipedia even though ved is on the UNESCO list of OSS. Schily (talk) 09:54, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Merge from Neovim

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
The result of this discussion was to merge. — Rwxrwxrwx (talk) 22:07, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

The content from Neovim should be merged into this article. That software is intended to be a drop-in replacement for Vim, and deserves a mention here, but does not yet meet WP's notability standards. If it does eventually become notable, then it can be re-created. — Rwxrwxrwx (talk) 13:21, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

  • Support Info about neovim is useful information for a wiki and anyone interested in vim the editor. Inclusion here makes sense, and can be split in a few years if/when notable sources are produced. 71.185.85.170 (talk) 01:53, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

relating Stevie authors

A recent edit cites one individual as the original author of Stevie, with contributions from two others. The given source does not provide that information. A better source is needed to support the statement. TEDickey (talk) 09:31, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

My apologies, looks like I WP:SYNTHED the sources. I have changed it to "...created by Tim Thompson, Tony Andrews, and G.R. (Fred) Walter," but kept the discuss tag. Sunmist3 (talk) 13:59, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

That looks better (the Stevie topic would have been a better place to explain the contributions but Vim's acknowledgements does not give a clue, and the only sources from Vim's side were written long after, so some investigation would be needed) TEDickey (talk) 16:46, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Relationship with vi? Merge with vi?

This may be a terrible idea for reasons I haven't thought of, but why not merge vim and vi? I'm pretty sure most people using Linux think they're using vi when they're actually using vim, or some other clone. Ubuntu for example ships with vim but aliases vi to it. The story is one continuous history. Vi's functionality is a straightup subset of Vim's afaik. I expect a lot of people read the vi article thinking that's what they're using. Is vi even included in distros anymore? --Cornellier (talk) 22:13, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

vim's not a POSIX standard. There are lots of reasons for not merging things that look similar, but are different TEDickey (talk) 22:54, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
vi is not a POSIX standard either. As our vi article says, "The portable subset of the behavior of vi and programs based on it, and the ex editor language supported within these programs, is described by (and thus standardized by) the Single Unix Specification and POSIX." I am pretty sure that vi, vim, and neovim all have the behavior described. There may be reasons not to merge, but this isn't one of them. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:16, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
Actually, the only reason I can think of for merging is for purely promotional reasons. TEDickey (talk) 02:52, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
What promotion reasons? I have no idea what you mean. I've given some pretty good reasons above for merging, which no one has addressed in their comments. --Cornellier (talk) 00:08, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
We've discussed your edits before. At the time, you appeared to be unaware of the style guide TEDickey (talk) 01:05, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
Red Herring and Ad Hominem. Cornellier's previous edits are irrelivant to the question of whether vi and vim should be merged.
I have been thinking about this, and here is why I think they should be merged.
Vim can be compiled as tiny, small, normal, big and huge, and it can be configured to disable all features not found in vi (compatibility mode). On many Linux distributions, when you type vi you get either the tiny or small version of vim configured in compatibility mode. So many users think they are running vi when they are actually running vim in vi compatibility mode.
Here is what I think we should do. We should do the merge, and we should create a new page called List of vi-compatible text editors. Start off with something like "there are several text editors that can be configured to behave like vi, the standard text editor for all Unix and Linux systems since 1976". Then we list them all stating with vi itself. I know that neovim can be made to act like vi. I would have to look into elvis and evil. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:53, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
Support with the caveat wait and see if a separate list is necessary or if it can fit on the merged page --Cornellier (talk) 03:08, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
You might even get around to establishing notability for the one you've been promoting. Probably not, based on your response above. TEDickey (talk) 02:16, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
Not sure if this correct use of WP:INDENT. TEDickey are you replying to my original comment or something else? Who is the "you" in the above statement? I can't reply to the "promoting" comment. As stated above I know neither what it means nor to whom it is aimed. I already asked about that above and didn't get a reply from TEDickey. TEDickey please reply directly to the statements in this comment, and prefix with three colons. --Cornellier (talk) 02:50, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
TEDickey, you need to stop casting aspersions on other editors while refusing to provide evidence or even a hint so that others can figure out what you are talking about. Don't do it again. Cornellier, I suggest not replying to him. This is likely to end up at WP:ANI, and when I file the report I want to be able to say "Cornellier completely disengaged from TEDickey when I asked him to, but TEDickey continued the disruptive behavior."
So, other than TEDickey (who objects but has not provided a valid reason not to merge), does anyone object to the suggested merge? Should the target be vi or vim? I am leaning toward vim. because so few people actually use vi.
How about my List of vi-compatible text editors idea? Good idea? bad idea, please discuss (without any comments about other editors from either side). --Guy Macon (talk) 14:33, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
I pointed out that it is a promotional edit because the change altered the lede from a neutral discussion of the vi editor which mentions vim's historical role in context, equated the two editors. The style guide for the lede says that "Apart from basic facts, significant information should not appear in the lead if it is not covered in the remainder of the article." (the edit went beyond that) TEDickey (talk) 01:00, 8 February 2019 (UTC)
Sorry for a late comment, but I don't really understand why you would want to merge vim (text editor) and vi? What about nvi and elvis and the other vi clones, see vi#Ports and clones and vi#Contemporary derivatives and clones? Would you merge these too? I agree that vim is probably the most prominent of the vi clones now, and yet I don't think it has some sort of claim to be considered the one true successor to vi. – Tea2min (talk) 14:50, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
That's a compelling argument. Please consider me to have moved from being in favor of a merge to being undecided. Waiting for further arguments. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:05, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
Consider the list of Unix commands. Each of those commands has a single article. Yet lots have been around since Version 1 AT&T UNIX or even Multics and have been cloned to many many OSs. WP doesn't have a separate article for every one of the many ports and clones, so why is vi different? Per WP:NOTMANUAL not a lot needs to be said about every single clone. They can be rolled into Vi#Ports_and_clones. --Cornellier (talk) 17:41, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
I don't really see the relevance of WP:NOTMANUAL? And we don't have a separate article for every single text editor derived from vi, only for those that are notable themselves (I think). And those are not just reimplementations of the original vi, they added new features missing from the original vi. – Tea2min (talk) 18:55, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
I was thinking WP:NOTCHANGELOG but wrote NOTMANUAL. Sorry. Tea2min you're right, Vim is an evolution of vi, hence two pages. BUT I think my initial concern is still valid. People will say "I type the command vi, I'm using vi. I'll check the WP article". And the vi article makes it sound like vi is still "a thing" when maybe it's only of historical interest. Isn't it true that what people use and care about is vim (or some other clone)? E.g. the intro to vi says "a 2009 survey of Linux Journal readers found that vi was the most widely used text editor" but isn't that misleading? Wouldn't it have been a vi clone? The infobox for vi doesn't even have a "stable release" date. It's confusing. --Cornellier (talk) 20:26, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
The original vi isn't used anymore, and has not been used for decades, and in that sense "it's only of historical interest". It is however a rather important part of the history of text editors as the quintessential example of a modal editor. (And of course, there's decades of rivalry between vi and Emacs, see Editor war.)
The term vi today denotes a family of text editors that re-implement the features of the original vi and add their own extensions. vi has become sort of a genericized trademark: when people claim that they use vi they certainly don't refer to Bill Joy's original editor, they mean they use one of the editors derived from vi. (Or perhaps even a plugin that allows them to use vi key bindings with Microsoft Visual Studio[1][2], Eclipse[3], or even Emacs[4][5].)
As I said, I agree that vim is probably the most prominent of the editors derived from the original vi and perhaps even the de factor successor to POSIX vi, and yet I would argue that merging the articles vi and vim (text editor) would only lead to confusion and frustration. I think both articles should stay as they discuss different topics that are notable in themselves, namely the "generic" vi and one specific and quite prominent realization of that generic vi. – Tea2min (talk) 07:30, 8 February 2019 (UTC)
Thanks. That's good info. So vi is two things:
  • a modal text editor used in Linux/Unix environments, and which may use one of various packages, usually vim, it's original version was ...
  • a pioneering software product, now defunct (?), which pioneered the type but which has been replaced by functionally-extended clones.
Right now this is not at all clear in the vi article in my humble gnomish opinion. --Cornellier (talk) 00:26, 9 February 2019 (UTC)
It probably could be made clearer. The lead section of the vi article has this to say:
"The portable subset of the behavior of vi and programs based on it, and the ex editor language supported within these programs, is described by (and thus standardized by) the Single Unix Specification and POSIX."
And:
"In addition to various non–free software variants of vi distributed with proprietary implementations of Unix, vi was opensourced with OpenSolaris, and several free and open source software vi clones exist."
The point is, every vendor claiming POSIX conformance for his version of a Unix-like operating system had to provide a vi editor with this operating system. So, early on, there were many implementations of vi, or rather, many text editors named vi that realized those parts of the behaviour of the original vi that were described in the specification(s). (Striking my own wrong comment, see TEDickey's reply. – Tea2min (talk) 07:03, 10 February 2019 (UTC)) – Tea2min (talk) 06:34, 9 February 2019 (UTC)
That's incorrect: your "many implementations of vi" are different releases and local patches to BSD/AT&T source code (a closely related family), when taken in the context of vendors. vim is not a descendant of another of that, but a separate implementation. (actually a lot of the above is arguable -- it might help if you read the source code -- bye) TEDickey (talk) 11:41, 9 February 2019 (UTC)
Apparently I have been misinformed, I was not aware that vi versions for IRIX, HP-UX, Solaris etc. actually shared a common code base. Thanks for clearing that up.
You wrote: "vim is not a descendant of another of that, but a separate implementation." Yes, of course. But is that not another reason not to merge vi and vim (text editor)? – Tea2min (talk) 17:48, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

See [6]

Is there a citation for RIX, HP-UX, Solaris etc. sharing a common code base? "based on" doesn't always mean "share code with". sometimes there is a complete rewrite, especially when changing languages, and sometimes for legal reasons. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:17, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps you meant AIX. They're all written in C (so the comment about "complete rewrite" is a throwaway). The aspect of those systems sharing code is fairly well established, even in Wikipedia (see UNIX System V and its mention in the AIX, etc., topics). I suppose it would be nice if someone has a detailed history of each of the utilities on each of those systems, but that's lacking. I happened to know about vi, etc., from comments by Keith Bostic and others, but they've not produced the type of document that you might want. I could go more into detail, but am reminded from a previous episode that you'll produce counter-examples such as this, so I'd be wasting my time. TEDickey (talk) 01:13, 10 February 2019 (UTC)
Thank you for that comment. I will strike my comments above. – Tea2min (talk) 07:03, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

neovim and notability

Not I, but someone commented that Wikipedia is not the place to promote your nonnotable pet projects, and someone else stated that they disagreed with that. TEDickey (talk) 19:05, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

That's because it is notable and is not a pet project.
Pet Project?
"In 2014, a couple of Vim community members, unhappy with how their efforts to refactor and modernize the codebase was not getting any support, decided to start the Neovim project.
They forked the Vim project (the beauty of Open Source!), refactored the codebase and added a couple of new, highly expected functionalities to it. On the flipside, they did drop support for some older, very niche platforms in order to accommodate the newer code.
Neovim had a huge success in the community and as a result, the original Vim project, maintained by Vims creator Bram Moolenar, had to implement some of these new functionalities in order to keep up with this new 'competitor'." --Cláudio Ribeiro, author of An IDE Called Vim.[7]
I don't know whether you are familiar with Gource[8] but it is a visualization tool that shows a software project as animated tree with directories as branches and files as leaves. Developers can be seen working on the tree at the times they contributed to the project. A "pet project" visualized using Georce shows one or perhaps a handful of developers. A mature project with many developers working on it shows that activity. It also shows whether most of the developers hop around and work on many things or whether one developer pretty much makes part of the project his "pet".
You can see a Gource visualization on Neovim here: [9]
Notable?
Presentation about Neovim at VimConf[10] 2018: [11]
And another at VimConf 2014:[12]
Presentations about Neovim at Vimfest[13] 2017:[14][15]
And another from VimFest 2016:[16]
Book from The Pragmatic Bookshelf about Neovim:[17]
Also see Chapter 9 of Mastering Vim: Build a software development environment with Vim and Neovim By Ruslan Osipov.[18]
...and a few of the many websites that cover Neovim: [19][20][21][22][23][24][25]
Note: I have no connection with Neovim except as a user -- and I often use whatever the OS default is (usually a subset of Vim). --Guy Macon (talk) 20:31, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
Whatever - the first third of your response is unconvincing (particularly the part about gource). I doubt that I'll find any use for that third. But back to the point: your edit comment did not address the change itself, but went a little beyond that. 22:01, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
There are several vim forks, which is itself a fork of vi. The vim page doesn't need to have an entire section about a fork of a fork. Plus, the section reads like it was written by people involved with neovim and this is because it was (https://www.reddit.com/r/neovim/comments/44zmx1/we_should_create_a_wikipedia_page_for_neovim/). If someone wants to read about all of the amazing features in neovim and reasons why it's great, they can go to the neovim website, or to the subreddit that spawned this edit brigade. Wikipedia is not for promoting software projects. 2601:2C4:C480:19E7:0:0:0:9001 (talk) 09:06, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
Riiiight. A dozen posts on Reddit three years ago means that we should ignore extensive coverage in books such as An IDE Called Vim, Modern Vim: Craft Your Development Environment with Vim 8 and Neovim and Mastering Vim: Build a software development environment with Vim and Neovim. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:20, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
"I have played around with a few external editors tied to browsers, but -- at least to me -- cutting and pasting the source into an external editor, editing (and saving a copy -- occasionally having a copy comes in handy) and pasting it back works really well. Getting off-topic here, but for anyone using Vi or Vim, I highly recommend NeoVim.[7] (In particular. read the section "The Codebase".) [8][9] --Guy Macon (talk) 16:06, 25 March 2019 (UTC)"
Your promotion of neovim in other talk pages seems very suspect to me. Contributions to Wikipedia should be objective and not influenced or inspired by one's personal opinions about the subject matter. At most, neovim deserves a brief mention with an external link to the website, not a standalone section detailing the current features, the upcoming features, the development progress, the fundraising campaign, the GitHub and PPAs, etc. Let's just cool it a little bit with gushing about our favorite Linux programs on Wikipedia. 2601:2C4:C480:19E7:3468:EEC8:8AAC:E991 (talk) 03:16, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
Please WP:AGF. The fact that I like neovim is irrelevant. I have !voted to delete several programs that I really like because the coverage in reliable sources were not up to our standards. I already gave you sources that justify coverage. --Guy Macon (talk) 07:13, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
Suit yourself, I'm easy. 2601:2C4:C480:19E7:F0D1:1FC8:8372:6E6D (talk) 10:04, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
Archive 1
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