Vim
Graphical Vim under GTK+ 2
Design by	Bram Moolenaar
Initial release	1991
Stable release	7.1  (2007-05-12) [+/−]
Preview release	7.1.283  (2008-03-16) [+/−]
Written in	C
Platform	Cross-platform
Available in	English, Chinese, French, Italian, Polish, Russian[1]
Genre	Text editor
License	Free software, charityware
Website	http://www.vim.org/

Vim is a text editor first released by Bram Moolenaar in 1991 for the Amiga computer. GTK+, or The GIMP Toolkit, is a Cross-platform Widget toolkit for creating Graphical user interfaces It is one of the most popular toolkits Software design is a process of problem-solving and planning for a Software solution Bram Moolenaar (born in 1961 in Lisse province of Zuid-Holland Netherlands is an active member of the Open source software community A software release is the distribution whether public or private of an initial or new and upgraded version of a Computer software product Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 1191 - Richard I of England marries Berengaria of Navarre. A software release is the distribution whether public or private of an initial or new and upgraded version of a Computer software product 2008 ( MMVIII) is the current year in accordance with the Gregorian calendar, a Leap year that started on Tuesday of the Common Events 597 BC - Babylonians capture Jerusalem, replace Jehoiachin with Zedekiah as king A programming language is an Artificial language that can be used to write programs which control the behavior of a machine particularly a Computer. tags please moot on the talk page first! --> In Computing, C is a general-purpose cross-platform block structured In Computing, a platform describes some sort of Hardware architecture or Software framework (including Application frameworks, that allows In computing cross-platform (also known as multi-platform) is a term used to refer to Computer software or computing methods and concepts that are implemented A language is a dynamic set of visual auditory or tactile Symbols of Communication and the elements used to manipulate them Computer software can be organized into categories based on common function type or field of use A text editor is a type of program used for editing plain Text files Text editors are often provided with Operating systems or software development A software license (or software licence in commonwealth usage is a Legal instrument governing the usage or redistribution of copyright protected software A free software licence is a Software licence which grants recipients rights to modify and redistribute the Software which would otherwise be prohibited by Copyright Careware (or charityware, charityware, helpware, goodware) is Software distributed in a way that benefits a charity. A website (alternatively web site or Web site, a back-construction from the Proper noun World Wide Web) is a collection of Web pages A text editor is a type of program used for editing plain Text files Text editors are often provided with Operating systems or software development Bram Moolenaar (born in 1961 in Lisse province of Zuid-Holland Netherlands is an active member of the Open source software community The Amiga is a family of Personal computers originally developed by Amiga Corporation. Vim was created as an extended version of the vi editor, with many additional features designed to be helpful in editing program source code; its full name is Vi IMproved. vi is a screen-oriented Text editor written by Bill Joy in 1976 for an early BSD release In Computer science, source code (commonly just source or code) is any sequence of statements or declarations written in some Human-readable ^[2]

While Vim is cross-platform, it is most popular on Unix-like operating systems. In computing cross-platform (also known as multi-platform) is a term used to refer to Computer software or computing methods and concepts that are implemented A Unix-like (sometimes shortened to *nix) Operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system while not necessarily conforming ^[3]

Released under a software license compatible with the GNU General Public License, Vim is free and open source software. A software license (or software licence in commonwealth usage is a Legal instrument governing the usage or redistribution of copyright protected software Free and open source software, also F/OSS, FOSS, or FLOSS (for Free/Libre/Open Source Software) is software which is liberally licensed The program's license includes some charityware clauses. Careware (or charityware, charityware, helpware, goodware) is Software distributed in a way that benefits a charity. ^[4]

Interface

Vim running in a terminal emulator

Like vi, Vim's interface is based not on menus or icons but on commands given in a text user interface; its GUI mode, gVim, adds menus and toolbars for commonly used commands but the full functionality is still expressed through its command line mode. A terminal emulator, terminal application, term, or tty for short is a program that emulates a "dumb" video terminal within some other TUI short for Text User Interface or Textual User Interface (and sometimes Terminal User Interface) is a Retronym that was coined sometime

For many users learning Vim may be slow initially, but once the basics are understood they progress quickly. ^[5] To facilitate this, Vim has a built-in tutorial for beginners. Academia In British academic parlance a tutorial is a small class of one or only a few Students in which the Tutor (a Lecturer There is also the Vim Users' Manual that details the basic and more advanced Vim features. A user guide, also commonly known as a manual, is a Technical communication Document intended to give assistance to people using a particular system This manual can be read from within Vim, or found online. ^[6]

Vim also has a built-in help facility (using the :help command) that allows users to query and navigate through commands and features.

Modal editing

As a descendant of vi, Vim is modal—a design choice which tends to confuse new users. vi is a screen-oriented Text editor written by Bill Joy in 1976 for an early BSD release In User interface design a mode is a distinct setting within a computer program or any physical machine interface in which the same user input will produce perceived different All editors are modal in the general sense of having to distinguish insert and command inputs, but most others implement that modality through very different methods: command menus (mouse or keyboard driven), meta keys (simultaneous use of multiple keys, usually involving control key (CTRL) or alt key (ALT)), and mouse input. In Computing, a command is a directive to a computer program acting as an interpreter of some kind in order to perform a specific task In a Restaurant, a menu is a printed brochure or public display that shows the list of options for a diner to select In Computing, a mouse (plural mice, mouse devices, or mouses) In Computing, a keyboard is an Input device partially modelled after the typewriter keyboard which uses an arrangement of buttons or keys The Meta key was a special key on old MIT Computer keyboards such as the Space-cadet keyboard. For a list of keyboard shortcuts see Table of keyboard shortcuts The Alt key on a computer keyboard is used to change (alternate the function Vim, following vi, is unique in that the entire keyboard is switched into and out of these modes. This allows, but does not require, one to perform all editing functions with no use of the mouse or menus and minimal use of meta keys. For touch-typists and those averse to the mouse, this can be a great benefit in power and efficiency. Touch typing is Typing without using the sense of sight to find the keys

Customization

Part of Vim's power is that it can be extensively customized. The basic interface can be controlled by the many options available, and the user can define personalized key mappings—often called macros—or abbreviations to automate sequences of keystrokes, or even call internal or user defined functions. A macro (from the Greek 'μάκρο' for long or far in Computer science is a rule or Pattern that specifies how a certain input sequence (often a sequence

Vim script

There are many plugins available that will extend or add new functionality to Vim. These complex scripts are usually written in Vim's internal scripting language vimscript. ^[7] Vim also supports scripting using MzScheme, Perl, Python, Ruby, Tcl, and other languages. PLT Scheme is an innovative programming language that builds on a rich academic and practical tradition NOTES FOR EDITORS "Perl" is not an acronym (read the "Name" section below Python is a general-purpose High-level programming language. Its design philosophy emphasizes programmer productivity and code readability Ruby is a dynamic, reflective, general purpose Object-oriented programming language that combines syntax inspired by Perl with Smalltalk Tcl (originally from "Tool Command Language" but nonetheless conventionally rendered as "Tcl" rather than "TCL" pronounced as " tickle "

Bundles

There are projects bundling together complex scripts and customizations and aimed at turning Vim into a tool for a specific task or adding a major flavour to its behaviour. Examples include Cream which makes Vim behave like a click-and-type editor or VimOutliner that provides a comfortable outliner for users of Unix-like systems. Cream is a configuration of the Vim Text editor that consists of a set of scripts which can be run within Vim to make it behave more like an editor now common to most An outliner is a special Text editor that allows text to be structured as an Outline.

Features and improvements over vi

Vim is almost fully vi compatible when in compatible mode, but Vim has many enhancements over vi which may or may not be available in compatible mode. ^[8]

Some of those enhancements include completion, comparison and merging of files (known as vimdiff), a comprehensive integrated help system, extended regular expressions, scripting languages (both native and through alternative scripting interpreters such as Perl, Python, Ruby, Tcl, etc. Autocomplete is a feature provided by many Source code Text editors Word processors and Web browsers Autocomplete involves the program predicting File comparison in Computing is the automatic comparing of data between files on a File system. Merging is the act of reconciling multiple changes made to different copies of the same file In Computing, regular expressions provide a concise and flexible means for identifying strings of text of interest such as particular characters words or patterns of characters "Scripting" redirects here For other uses see Script. ) including support for plugins, a graphical user interface (known as gvim), limited integrated development environment-like features, mouse interaction (both with and without the GUI), folding, editing of compressed or archived files in gzip, bzip2, zip, and tar format and files over network protocols such as SSH, FTP, and HTTP, session state preservation, spell checking, split (horizontal and vertical) and tabbed windows, unicode and other multi-language support, syntax highlighting, trans-session command, search, and cursor position histories, multiple level undo/redo history, and visual mode. In Computing, an integrated development environment ( IDE) is a Software application that provides comprehensive facilities to Computer programmers In Computing, a mouse (plural mice, mouse devices, or mouses) A folding editor is a Text editor which supports text folding or Code folding, a mechanism allowing the user to hide and reveal blocks of text&mdashusually named gzip is a Software application used for File compression. gzip is short for GNU zip; the program is a Free software replacement for the bzip2 is a free and open source Lossless data compression Algorithm and program developed by Julian Seward. The ZIP File format is a Data compression and archival format. In Computing, tar (derived from tape archive) is both a File format (in the form of a type of archive Bitstream) and the name Secure Shell or SSH is a Network protocol that allows data to be exchanged using a Secure channel between two networked devices Hypertext Transfer Protocol ( HTTP) is a Communications protocol for the transfer of information on the Internet. In Computing, a spell checker is an applications program that flags words in a document that may not be spelled correctly In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's Syntax highlighting is a feature of some Text editors that displays text&mdashespecially Source code &mdashin different colors and fonts according to Command history is a common feature in operating system shells (such as Korn shell, Bash, Cmd Undo is a command in many computer programs It erases the last change done to the document reverting it to an older state Vim is a Text editor first released by Bram Moolenaar in 1991 for the Amiga computer

While vi was traditionally only available on Unix operating systems, Vim is very portable; there are versions for AmigaOS (the initial target platform), Atari MiNT, BeOS, MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/Server 2003/Vista/Server 2008, IBM OS/2 and OS/390, MorphOS, OpenVMS, QNX, RISC OS, Unix, Linux, BSD, Mac OS and Mac OS X, etc. Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX, sometimes also written as Unix with Small caps) is a computer See also Software portability In Computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created AmigaOS is the default native Operating system of the Amiga personal computer Atari is a corporate and brand name owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. MiNT ("MiNT is Now TOS" is a Free software alternative Operating system kernel for the Atari ST and its successors BeOS is an Operating system for Personal computers which began development by Be Inc DOS, short for "Disk Operating System" is a shorthand term for several closely related Operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market Microsoft Windows is a series of Software Operating systems and Graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented Graphical user interface -based Operating system. Windows 98 ( codenamed Memphis) is a graphical Operating system released on 25 June 1998 by Microsoft and the successor to Windows 95 Windows Millennium Edition, or Windows Me (IPA pronunciation, iː is a hybrid 16-bit / 32-bit graphical Operating system released on 14 September Windows NT is a family of Operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993 Windows 2000 (also referred to as Win2K) is a preemptive, interruptible graphical and business-oriented Operating system designed to work with Windows XP is a family of 32-bit and 64-bit Operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on Personal computers including home and Windows Server 2003 (also referred to as Win2K3 is a server Operating system produced by Microsoft. Windows Vista (ˈvɪstə is a line of Operating systems developed by Microsoft for use on Personal computers including home and business desktops Windows Server 2008 is the most recent release of Microsoft Windows ' server line of Operating systems Released to manufacturing on 4 February International Business Machines Corporation abbreviated IBM and nicknamed "Big Blue", is a multinational Computer Technology OS/2 is a computer Operating system, initially created by Microsoft and IBM, then later developed by IBM exclusively OS/390 is an IBM Operating system for the System/390 IBM mainframe computers. MorphOS is a computer Operating system (OS It is a mixed proprietary and Open source OS produced for the Pegasos PowerPC (PPC-processor-based Open Virtual Memory System ( OpenVMS) initially known just as Virtual Memory System ( VMS) is the name of a High-end Computer server QNX (pronounced either Q-N-X or Q-nix is a commercial Unix-like Real-time operating system, aimed primarily at the Embedded systems market RISC OS is an Operating system originally created by British manufacturer Acorn Computers for their ARM based Computers ranging Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX, sometimes also written as Unix with Small caps) is a computer Linux (commonly pronounced ˈlɪnəks Mac OS is the trademarked name for a series of Graphical user interface -based Operating systems developed by Apple Inc Mac OS X (mæk oʊ ɛs tɛn is a line of computer Operating systems developed marketed and sold by Apple Inc, the latest of which is pre-loaded on all currently ^[9]

History

(Note that some dates are approximate,^[11] development releases are not listed, and many minor version releases are not yet included in this list. )

See also

• List of text editors
• Comparison of text editors
• Editor war
• Cream (software)
• List of Unix programs

References

External links

• Vim home page
• Online Vim documentation
• Vim Tips Wiki at Wikia
• #vim on freenode