01 Feb, 2013, yue wrote in the 41st comment:
Votes: 0
Vadi said:
I like ATCP's / GMCP's Composer feature, where the client will spawn a notepad-like interface for editing the text and saving it.

^

Also, I don't really see Vim as a replacement/upgrade for Vi - you have one program that is a line-editor (where removing you fingers from home-row is almost never required) and one editor that uses a GUI (where using the mouse is "default"). Sure, Vim offers other features that early Vi did not but comparing them seems kind of odd to me.

No mention of Emacs here?? :/
01 Feb, 2013, bbailey wrote in the 42nd comment:
Votes: 0
yue said:
Also, I don't really see Vim as a replacement/upgrade for Vi - you have one program that is a line-editor (where removing you fingers from home-row is almost never required) and one editor that uses a GUI (where using the mouse is "default"). Sure, Vim offers other features that early Vi did not but comparing them seems kind of odd to me.


A gui is only one of the features vim offers and one I don't use.

For clarification: I mean that vim is just as a effective on the command line via a terminal as vi.
02 Feb, 2013, quixadhal wrote in the 43rd comment:
Votes: 0
There are only two features of vim that I use regularly, which vi didn't have.

The ability to open multiple files in a split screen (ctrl-w ctrl-w to switch between buffers), and the "visual select" feature of hitting V (or ctrl-v) to highlight a range of lines, which is often simpler than using line numbers.

I don't know about this "mouse" thing you're talking about… I code via ssh and neither have nor desire one. :)

EDIT: I didn't mention emacs, because my Mother taught me if you don't have anything nice to say…
04 Feb, 2013, Telgar wrote in the 44th comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
There are only two features of vim that I use regularly, which vi didn't have.

The ability to open multiple files in a split screen (ctrl-w ctrl-w to switch between buffers), and the "visual select" feature of hitting V (or ctrl-v) to highlight a range of lines, which is often simpler than using line numbers.

I don't know about this "mouse" thing you're talking about… I code via ssh and neither have nor desire one. :)

EDIT: I didn't mention emacs, because my Mother taught me if you don't have anything nice to say…


LOL at the edit.

I consistently hear this about VI, that marking and highlighting text is this ber-grail. While I can see some possible uses, what am I missing in terms of functionality if I don't have this?

I really, really wish I was able to scrape [SHIFT-rightArrow] characters from my input, but about 0.5% of clients actually are able to send input that complex. So I am looking to fall back to something like VI's input mode.

Hearing about what you use the visual mark mode for would be incredibly useful!!!
04 Feb, 2013, quixadhal wrote in the 45th comment:
Votes: 0
Well, as you know, vi was designed as a visual version of ed or ex. It's a modal editor, where it starts out in command mode until you perform an operation that requires input.

In traditional vi, for example, 'd' is the delete command. It's followed by the thing you want to delete, which most comonly is 'd' for the current line, or 'w' for the current word. Where the real power of vi shines is being able to use numbers to specific repetition, so deleting 6 words is 'd6w', deleting the next 3 lines would be 'd3d'. There are plenty of commands, and quite a few modifiers. You could delete lines 20 through 37 by specifying a range, such as '30,27dd'

What visual selection does is allow you to hit the selection operator (vim extension) and then move the cursor to highlight the part of the text you want to operate on. So, you could hit shift-V for line-selection mode, hit '%' to jump to the paren that matched the one that's in the line you're on (IE: the top or bottom of your function), then hit j a few times to catch comments or a few extra lines, and hit 'd' to delete it, then 'P' to place it right back. Now you have a copy of it in your paste buffer, so you can move elsewhere and 'P' another copy.

In the right circumstances, ctrl-v is also quite handy… it selects in a block, which is great for removing leading whitespace, or a whole comment block that's split over multiple lines of code like this:

stuff();  /* This is a silly comment */
stuff(); /* And would be a pain to remove */
stuff(); /* without block selection */
stuff(); more_stuff();


But why ask me? Just go download and install it. There's even a windoze version. Just ignore the mouse and/or arrow keys, as they're added for n00bs who refuse to learn. :)
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