Vim Releases 'Killersheep' Game To Demo Two New Features In Vim 8.2 (vim.org) 24
The creators of Vim have released a game called "Killersheep" to show off two new features in Vim 8.2.
"Before I did the keynote at VimConf 2018 I asked plugin developers what they wanted from Vim," reads the announcement at Vim.org. "The result was a very long list of requested features. The top two items were clear: Popup windows and text properties." After more than a year of development the new features are now ready for the Vim crowds.
Popup windows make it possible to show messages, function prototypes, code snippets and anything else on top of the text being edited. They open and close quickly and can be highlighted in many ways... This was no small effort. Although the existing window support could be used, popup windows are different enough to require a lot of extra logic. Especially to update the screen efficiently. Also to make it easy for plugin writers to use them; you don't need to tell Vim exactly where to show one, just give a reference point and the text to display, Vim will figure out the size and where the popup fits best.
Text properties can be used for something as simple as highlighting a text snippet or something as complicated as using an external parser to locate syntax items and highlight them asynchronously. This can be used instead of the pattern based syntax highlighting. A text property sticks with the text, also when inserting a word before it. And this is done efficiently by storing the properties with the text.
"Before I did the keynote at VimConf 2018 I asked plugin developers what they wanted from Vim," reads the announcement at Vim.org. "The result was a very long list of requested features. The top two items were clear: Popup windows and text properties." After more than a year of development the new features are now ready for the Vim crowds.
Popup windows make it possible to show messages, function prototypes, code snippets and anything else on top of the text being edited. They open and close quickly and can be highlighted in many ways... This was no small effort. Although the existing window support could be used, popup windows are different enough to require a lot of extra logic. Especially to update the screen efficiently. Also to make it easy for plugin writers to use them; you don't need to tell Vim exactly where to show one, just give a reference point and the text to display, Vim will figure out the size and where the popup fits best.
Text properties can be used for something as simple as highlighting a text snippet or something as complicated as using an external parser to locate syntax items and highlight them asynchronously. This can be used instead of the pattern based syntax highlighting. A text property sticks with the text, also when inserting a word before it. And this is done efficiently by storing the properties with the text.
Re: Bloatware (Score:2)
They say the windows pop up "fast" but I wonder how quick it will be on a 9600 baud VT100 editing session. Sounds like it will keep curses pretty busy.
Re: (Score:2)
Try it. I expect about 2ms (Score:2)
If you test it I'd be interested in seeing your results.
My guess is that it'll be no more 2ms plus the latency of the single small packet used.
Re: (Score:2)
Because in 2019, 9600 baud VT100 terminals are the main thing we should be concerned about.
My Dolby Receiver (Score:4)
For the last couple of decades, audio 5.1 receivers have just been the VCR or clock radios of their era in terms of being hard to use. The problem is the more infrequently used features you cram into a limit set of controls the less useful the whole thing becomes. Why do I have to scroll thorough settings like "Arena" and "theater" and "Jazz" just to snap the dolby pro-logic on or off? Same with a gazillion different input modes. And then re-using the same nobs for different purposes.
It's not that you can say well just don't use those features. It's just that you complicate getting to the useful ones and when you accidentally toggle it into some weird ass mode you get stuck finding your way back out.
VIM has always had issues with being too modal and if you can't recall the key strokes to get back out of some some mode or unwind some setting you are hosed.
This cannot be a good development for people who just want something a bit more useful than Nano or Pico.
It is as you say death by bloatware.
Re:My Dolby Receiver (Score:5, Interesting)
This cannot be a good development for people who just want something a bit more useful than Nano or Pico.
It is as you say death by bloatware.
Oh no!
Vim has one new feature in 20 years. This is the end of an era, the bloatware has taken my vim!
Configure your vim not to use these features and move on.
(Or more likely, distributed configuration of vim will keep it consistent with old style vi.)
Re: (Score:3)
As far as I can tell, the two big new features, popup windows and text properties, are primarily for plug-ins to use, and base Vim itself makes little to no use of the new functionality. And if you build Vim yourself, you can choose to compile that functionality out if you don't want it.
As editors go, Vim is still pretty lean and lightweight, especially compared to the latest generation of editors built on Electron. Though you can still really slow it down and bloat things up by installing a bunch of plug
Re: (Score:2)
If you want a lighter weight vi, use nvi. It's bug for bug compatible.
If you want something a bit easier to use than vi with a few more useful features, then vim might be more appropriate.
The good thing is, there's a choice. And for basic editing, you can't really tell between nvi and vim. And if you're editing something that would bog down a modern computer in vim and not in nvi, well, maybe you really shouldn't be doing that.
Personally, I use vim in GUI mode rather than a shell terminal. Sometimes mousing
ZZzzzzz Cant say that, lameness filter (Score:2)
https://youtu.be/A33pDTAFtdY?t... [youtu.be]
ZZZzzzz Cant say that, lameness filter
Great, so Nazi trolls can post there vitriolic ASCII art but I can't post this, WTF?
All Those New VIM Features! (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
That is my take (no mod points). At the rate it is going it will rival Emacs in size
I am grateful to the developers working on this and I have given to it's charity, but I wish it would keep to it's vi roots. To me 6.x had all the features I needed.
Starting with 7.x I had to spend a lot time turning off many of new features that were enabled by default. Same thing happened in 8.1 and I am worried about what defaults 8.2 brings
Re: (Score:2)
Keep bringing the new functionality, someday VIM will overtake Emacs and win the ancient argument once and for all!
I imagine the Heat Death of the Universe [wikipedia.org] will occur way before that. ... :-)
Which, come to think of it, is bound to the Emacs key-sequence
VIM has become a nice OS... (Score:2)
If only it had a good editor!
I guess I'll go back to EmacsOS....
(FirefoxOS or ChromeOS aka Electron aka Atom editor is too dumbfangled, even for me.)
-- the village iTard.
Re: (Score:2)
VI is larger than JOE (Score:2)
Vi people make jokes about how big EMACS is, but vi is large too. Even vim is big (slackware64):
joe-4.6-x86_64-2.txz 13-Apr-2018 13:23 485K
vim-8.2.0007-x86_64-1.txz 14-Dec-2019 18:10 7.0M
Emacs is bigger than DSL (Score:2)
For comparison, the Emacs xz is 42 MB.
That's about the uncompressed size of a smallish Linux distro full GUI.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes but that number includes a lot of external scripts and plugins for vim and syntax highlighting for hundreds of languages and a dozen different color schemes. Not to mention international messages, documentation, and such. On most distros vim is available in several forms, including a minimal distribution, which is fairly small, thought not as small as vi. But yes I can believe vim is bigger than joe.
If you think about it, 485k is ridiculously large for an editor also. That wouldn't even fit on a 5.2
Can't wait ... (Score:2)