What does "Vi IMproved" mean?

FreeBSD: "A vi "workalike", with many additional features."

Linux: "vim - Vi IMproved, a programmers text editor"

    AmigaOS, AtariMiNT, BeOS, DOS, MacOS,
    MachTen, OS/2, RiscOS, VMS, and Windows (95/98/NT4/NT5/2000)

    A/UX, AIX, BSDI, Convex, DYNIX/ptx, DG/UX, DEC Unix, FreeBSD,
    HPUX, Irix, Linux [Debian, RedHat, Slackware, SuSE,...],
    MacOSX, NetBSD, NEXTSTEP, OpenBSD, OSF, QNX, SCO, Sinix,
    Solaris, SunOS, SUPER-UX, Ultrix, Unixware, Unisys.

010223: Interesting Macro Set:
	An (ASCII) Mandelbrot Set Generator
	written by Linus Akesson lft@df.lth.se:
	http://www.df.lth.se/~lft/vim/
	This macro generates the following output:
	    @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@.@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
	    @@@@@@@@@MMFFF99.99FFFMM@@@@@@@@
	    @@@@@@MMMFFFF9fi.if9FFFFMMM@@@@@
	    @@@@MMMFFFFF9.m...m.9FFFFFMMM@@@
	    @@@MMMMFFFF9fw.....wf9FFFFMMMM@@
	    @@MMMMFFF99flw.....wlf99FFFMMMM@
	    @MMMMMFF99l...........l99FFMMMMM
	    @MMMMMFfl...............lfFMMMMM
	    MMMMMMM9.m.............m.9MMMMMM
	    @MMMMMMF99f...........f99FMMMMMM
	    @MMMMMMMMFF9fffffffff9FFMMMMMMMM
	    @@MMMMMMMMMFFFFFFFFFFFMMMMMMMMM@
	    @@@MMMMMMMMMMMMMFMMMMMMMMMMMMM@@
	    @@@@MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM@@@
	    @@@@@@MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM@@@@@
	    @@@@@@@@@MMMMMMMMMMMMMMM@@@@@@@@

010222: New background picture: Vim+Scheme+HeidiKlum:




010221: New file: The Vim Tutor" in Lithuanian:
	http://www.vim.org/download/vim-tutor-lt.txt
	Translated by Laurynas Stančikas lasas@gim.ktu.lt - thanks!

010213/010221: New page: 
	Hungarian translation of the short description on Vim in six kilobytes.
	Translated by Németh Gábor foolman@keszthelyi-rt.hu - thanks!

010207:	FAQ: "Making an NT box usable (from a UNIX perspective)"
	http://www.cs.colorado.edu/csops/FAQ/NT/31_Usable.html#4.2
	Author: Scott A. Morris samorris@cs.colorado.edu
	"4.2 Editors : Vi, Vim, Emacs
	No OS is complete without vi. Surely you didn't think you
	were supposed to use notepad for editting things, did you?
	To most unix-users surprise, a fully functional version
	of vi is included with nt in the resource kit. .."

010201	New page: 
	Romanian translation of the short description on Vim in six kilobytes.
	Translated by Nastasie George george@cyberspace.ro - thanks!

010130: Here's a plug for a well maintained "binary site":
	http://www.polarfox.com/vim/ 
	This site offers several Vim binaries for Open VMS -
	for both Alphas and VAXes, with and without GUI.
	Also, take a look at his screenhots of the Vim-6 version:
	http://www.polarfox.com/vim/shot.html
	Well done, Zoltan Arpadffy! :-)

010108:	New page: 
	Portuguese translation of the short description on Vim in six kilobytes.
	Translated by Douglas Santos dsantos@inf.furb.br - thanks!

001221:	Vim desktop calendar for 2001 - download, print, and fold.
	Available in English (A4 and Letter) and Dutch (A4),
	as PostScript (compressed with gzip) and PDF.
	Made by Bram himself. See his site http://www.moolenaar.net
	Merry Christmas, everyone!  :-)

001215:	New page: Vad är Vim?
	Swedish translation of the short description on Vim in six kilobytes.
	Translated by Christian Andersson chrisand@cs.lth.se - thanks!

001121:	Change of mailing list address:
	vim-fr@club.voila.fr -> vim-fr@egroups.com

001113:	Bram Moolenaar's recent talk on
	Seven habits of effective text editing
	is now available on his website
	http://www.moolenaar.net
	in plain text, MS-Word, PostScript and PDF.
	The presentation was done with PowerPoint.
	"You probably want to get both the paper and the presentation,
	because the paper contains better text and the
	presentation has a few nice pictures."

001027:	New helppage:  "version6.txt"
	An overview to new features and changes for Vim-6.

001011:	New article:
	The continuing story of Vim (local copy)
	The paper submitted by Bram Moolenaar for the Linux200.nl conference,
	taking place 9-10 Oct 2000 in Ede (Netherlands),
	which gives a short overview to the development history
	of Vim and also on current development.

001005:	Join the Vim Webring!
	Full List:	http://nav.webring.yahoo.com/hub?ring=vim&list
	HTML Code:	http://sites.netscape.net/pottsdl1/webring.html
	Created by Douglas Potts pottsdl@bigfoot.com on 000823.

000921:	KVim - Vim for KDE ('K' Desktop Environment)
	Developer:   Thomas Capricelli capricel@yalbi.com
	Page:	http://aquila.rezel.enst.fr/thomas/vim/
	Please give Thomas some feedback!

000904:	Vim Color Editor HOWTO:
	http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Vim-HOWTO.html
	by Alavoor "Al Dev" Vasudevan alavoor@yahoo.com
	Last changed:  v14.0, 16 Aug 2000

FAQ: How to set the default colors for GUI?

[gvim, color setup]

Use the command ":hilight". Example:

        :hi Normal guibg=white guifg=black

FAQ: How do I specify where the gvim window will be placed on my desktop?

[gvim, startup]

Use the "-geom" startup option, specifying the "geometry" as columnsxlines+offset+offset.

        gvim -geom 80x65+10+50

Here are a few FAQs (with answers :-) which you should know:

Q: I have been out of touch with Vim development for a while - what's going on?
A: Take a look at the development page to read about some new features of vim-5.4 or look at the Vim History for a log of all changes.

Q: Whoa - a new version is out - should I test it?
A: Sure, everyone is welcome to test Vim, of course. However, you are expected to know how to handle an alpha/developer version - it is not meant for the faint of heart. If you are just "a user" then you had better leave the testing to others and look for the next release. Yes, these are scarce, but we really do a LOT of testing...

Q: Where's the MacOS version of Vim?
A: You can get the latest binaries for MacOS from the page of Dany St-Amant:

    http://www3.sympatico.ca/dany.stamant/vim/

Please read all of the VIM FAQ before asking questions. Thanks!

	SEARCH Search www.vim.org for words.
News and Overview
Short Description - Vim explained in 6 kilobytes - available in the following languages: Chinese (Mandarin), Chinese (Big5), Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish. (Translations welcome! Finnish anyone?)	News Latest news on Vim, Vim features, and the Vim Pages	Page Tree An overview to all pages at this site. (Yes, this needs an update...)
Feature Descriptions
Why use Vim? Why use a vi clone? What sets Vim apart?	Y2K compliancy Yes, vim *will* work after 1JAN2000. :-)
Distribution
Binaries&Packages Precompiled versions of vim. (Not for all systems, though.)	Distribution/Downloading How and where to get the latest Vim.	Mirrors (FTP,WWW) All FTP and WWW mirrors - for direct access.
Documentation
Documentation Overview A link list to many (online) documentation about Vim.	Helpfiles (TXT) Online versions of Vim-5.7's standard documentation (pure ASCII).	Helpfiles (HTML) Online versions of Vim-5.7's standard documentation converted to HTML for online reading with links.	FAQ Frequently Asked Questions and Answers.
HOWTOs
Vim Color Editor HOWTO by Alavoor "Al Dev" Vasudevan alavoor@yahoo.com	HowTo Docs on Vim (Index)
Advanced Editing / Pictures
Macros+Mappings Some useful macro/mapping sets.	Tips+Tricks (Answers) A collection of answers given by Sven on comp.editors and in emails.
Pictures
Buttons/Icons Buttons/icons you can use to advertise Vim on your website.	Screenshots Vim in action on various OSs - and in color!
Communication
Chat Chat with us on IRC!	Mailing Lists and Newsgroup How and where to discuss Vim and gets answers from.
Development
CVS Server Latest patches to the developer version.	Developer's Corner What's going on with current development?
History The History of Vim - all version release dates.	HOWTO Help How you can help the Vim community. Feedback, please!
User Pages / Feedback
Users Links to pages on Vim by Vim users. Sample config files and current syntax files.	Wishlist Features that users have requested for future versions.
Miscellaneous
Organization Who set all of this up? Some background info.	Press Articles about Vim in the media (magazines and newspapers).
Resources
Languages Available Language Syntax Files. Links to online versions.	Utilities Other programs that are useful for coding/editing with Vim
Fun Fun Fun :-)
Challenges "Can you do it?" - Some challenges on hacking with Vim.	Quotes Quotes of people about Vim.

Getting started with highly configurable programs usually means that you will have to RTFM a lot and combine possibilities until they give you the setup commands which really make the program *work* for you.

Taking a look at some setup files can usually give you some ideas about the power of the program. So I commented my setup file to let you know about some features of Vim:

Heavily commented setup file to get you started:

	ca  6K Sven's personal vimrc
	ca  6K Sven's personal gvimrc
	ca 66K Sven's big vimrc
	ca 24K Sven's big vimrc (compressed with gzip)



Here's a "minimal setup" of mine:


	set nocp " :-)
	" turn these ON:
	set digraph ek hidden ruler sc vb wmnu
	" turn these OFF:
	set noeb noet nosol
	" non-toggles:
	set bs=2 fo=cqrt ls=2 shm=at tw=72 ww=<,>,h,l
	set comments=b:#,:%,fb:-,n:>,n:)
	set list listchars=tab:»·,trail:·
	set viminfo=%,'50,\"100,:100,n~/.viminfo
	" settings which are the default
	" (at least with "nocompatible" anyway):
	" set smd sw=8 ts=8
	" mappings:
	map K     <NUL>
	map <C-Z> :shell
	map ,F :view    $VIMRUNTIME/filetype.vim
	map ,SO :source $VIMRUNTIME/syntax/
	map ,V  :view   $VIMRUNTIME/syntax/
	" autocommands:
	au FileType mail set tw=70
	" some colors:  "white on black"
	hi normal   ctermfg=white  ctermbg=black guifg=white  guibg=black
	hi nontext  ctermfg=blue   ctermbg=black guifg=blue   guibg=black
	" syntax coloring!! :-)
	syn on


It is also a good idea to print out the "Vim Guide" (by Oleg Raisky):


http://physlab.sci.ccny.cuny.edu/%7Eorycc/vim-main.html





 Let's Talk about Vim 


[Search www.vim.org]


You can chat with us on Vim.
See the Vim Chat Page for more info.


But if you are interested in helping others or
in discussing Vim's current development
then you can join one of the following mailing lists:


VIM Mailing Lists:


	 vim-announce@vim.org         Vim Announcements
	          vim@vim.org         Vim Help List
	      vim-dev@vim.org         Vim Development List
	      vim-mac@vim.org         Vim Development on the Macintosh
	vim-multibyte@vim.org         Vim Development of Multibyte Support
	vim-fr@yahoogroups.com        Vim for French speaking users



NOTE:  You cannot send to these mailing lists without subscription.
All lists require subscription
for posting!
And the vim-announce list is merely for announcements of new versions
(so it is pretty much "low volume").


Mailing List Archives:
However, if you do not like subscribing to mailing lists
or if you simply want to take a look at them
to see what's currently going on then you can search the
maillist archives on egroups.com.


See the page on mailing lists for more info!


News/Usenet:
However, I prefer "talking" about Vim on News (aka Usenet).
It is much easier to use a newsreader to subscribe and
unsubscribe to newsgroups than it is with mailing lists.
Furthermore, your messages are automatically archived on
deja.com which
has a powerful search interface for the medium.


Besides, comp.editors has been known for years
and is read by lots of people - especially Vim users.


VIM Usenet Newsgroups:

	comp.editors :-)

Here I am editing a post to the newsgroup comp.editors that explains the use of the "listchars" option which show you TABs, trailing spaces, and the end-of-line. (Why doesn't every editor allow you to show these?)

The colorization is done automatically by vim (using the description of the syntax file "mail.vim").

By the way, my newsreader is slrn which also works on color terminals (see some pictures).

Would you like to see more screen-shots of editing with Vim? Let me know!

	http://www.math.fu-berlin.de/~guckes/vim/

So if you cannot see any changes on http://www.vim.org/ that's because it is a mirror which is updated only once a day (well, actually at 2am MET).

A complete list of mirrors is given on

• Distribution Page

If you want to mirror these pages then you are very welcome to do so. Please take a look at the

• HowTo Mirror Page.

Most HTML is inserted by abbreviations - see my html.vim

Vi-Editor.org (aka "Vi Pages")

This site has everything else that applies to Vi - not only to Vim. It gives info about everything else that applies to Vi, including other Vi clones. There are lots of links to other documentation about Vi (intro, tips and tricks, the Vi FAQ) and also specialized info eg on the substitution command (aka search+replace).

---

Feedback!

[Search www.vim.org]

From: Sven Guckes <guckes@vim.org> To: You <reader@vim.org> Subject: Feedback, please! Comments? Corrections? Praise? Typos? Please send them to me - thanks! :-) Sven --· Sven Guckes guckes@vim.org "The wonderful thing about Tiggers Is Tiggers are wonderful chaps They're loaded with vim and with vigor..."

A small note on the signature...

---

Slow connection? Get faster access at a web mirror

Sven Guckes@vim.org ©1995-2001