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Let's go for another long comment. 1. I've seen that "…". I think it's an horrible UI as it is always at different horizontal positions forcing me to move my e

Let's go for another long comment. 1. I've seen that "…". I think it's an horrible UI as it is always at different horizontal positions forcing me to move my eyes a lot more than necessary. That symbol is also almost completely devoid of information: the number of folded lines and a sample are often useful and I can't get that with "…". Except if I take my mouse and hover on that "…" to preview my 50 or 100 folded lines cramped in a huge ass popin. Contrast that with a regular fold in Vim: http://i.imgur.com/WXg1p.png http://i.imgur.com/WXg1p.png * it is easy to find * it is easy to parse * it shows the number of hidden lines * it takes only one line * its purpose is obvious 2. Vim as signs for errors and fold indicators, there are plugins that show marks, too. A "fold" sign in the gutter is mainly useful if it's hard to notice the fold in the editor space. Because it's hard to spot "…" folds you scan the gutter to locate folds. Because it's hard to miss a fold in vim, such an indicator is not needed. But Vim's foldcolumn not only shows the location of a fold: it provides an additional information that no right pointing triangle or boxed plus sign can show: the depth of the fold. Anyway, if you only care about seeing folds in the gutter, well… that's covered too by the simple fact that the whole line is highligted. 3. I also work on small projects (under 50/60 files without assets) and everything in CtrlP is instantaneous. We obviously have very different æsthetic preferences: I find everything in ST2 absolutely hideous. The font size tricks in ctrl+p you describe are both very arbitrary, simplistic and distracting. Vim's CtrlP shows the paths of the matched files, highlights the matched characters and systematically puts the default match at the bottom. There's nothing hard about it: simple, clear, fast… and, again, it has lots more features than its ST2 "counterpart". Not to forget Vim's native wildmenu which also shows the path and highlights your choice in a very readable manner. I don't agree with your last paragraph as well. I really really really don't care if or why people don't like Vim. I chose it over dozens of editors/IDE because it worked for me: not because it was fashionable, not because I mistook it for something else. I have no stake in this, I don't root for Vim, I don't want more users, I don't want less users, I just don't care if it's easier, harder or whatever. I'm perfectly fine with Vim in its current state and I'm persuaded it doesn't need any of those pseudo-refinements. Vim is the work of love of a bunch of talented programmers with an unbelievable ecosystem. It's free in every meaning of the world, it's old and a lot more powerful than any other editor, with the possible exception of Emacs. Its core developpers and, I believe, many users certainly prefer Vim as it is and don't care at all about making it easier for new users. More attention, more users… all of that is necessary for Panic, MacRabbit, Macromates or SublimeHQ because that's the only way they can survive. They desperately need differentiating "features" to attract new users or justify license upgrades and make more money: skeuomorphic UI, rounded rectangles, gradients, transitions, integration with this or that trendy language or framework and so on. None of that matters to Vim and its developers and lots of its users. ST2's author is probably happier each time a Vim user switches to ST2 but Bram Moolenaar most certainly doesn't give a flying fuck. That's very important and that has to be considered when talking about cosmetic "enhancements" or "fixes" to Vim.

edanm 14y ago
I wonder, do you agree with the statement: "If someone remade vim so that you can have variable fonts and some more gui goodness, that would be a good thing"? I'm not saying changing the core of vim. I'm saying, let plugins have more options in terms of how they draw things on-screen? Because, if it's optional, I can't see why that would bother anyone. Unless you think it is simply impossible for anything other than the plain-text, single-font way vim works to have any advantage. We have stylistic differences, obviously. I've used both vim as my main editor, complete with a very customized .vimrc, as well as dozens of other editors (less heavily), including Sublime Text. I love vim, and it works wonders for me. But I think it's odd that you literally find nothing wrong with vim or nothing that can be improved. As for "getting users", I understand that you personally don't care. I care only inasmuch as I think the basic way of editing text that vim gives users is so much better, that I wish more people used it. I also care because I'd love something like Sublime, with a proper vim mode that actually manages to do most of what vim does, and that doesn't exist.
- johncoltrane 14y ago
  > "do you agree with the statement: "If someone remade vim so that you can have variable fonts and some more gui goodness, that would be a good thing"?" I don't think I would use it. But I'm curious by nature and I would probably try it out anyway, just like I did with all the ST2/Coda/Espresso/Vico/Chocolat/HappyEdit/Whatever that popped up in the last 2 to 3 years. At some point in the past, I felt limited as a TextMate user and I "needed" a change which I happily found in Vim. The benefits, for me, were/are absolutely huge, but I would switch again if the benefits were comparable. Cosmetic changes are not enough for me obviously and, IMO, the things you propose would a) not provide any noticeable benefit and b) work only in GVim/MacVim which makes no sense at all considering Vim's philosophy. But putting all of your ideas into a new project… I'd say "Go for it!". Keep in mind, though, that for a lot of Vim users the ability to run Vim in a terminal is absolutely mandatory. A shiny new GUI would be worse than useless. The "optional" part of your comment is actually very important. Adding all those things as options would take a lot of time and effort and probably a lot of rewriting for… almost nothing. > "But I think it's odd that you literally find nothing wrong with vim or nothing that can be improved." I think that the problems you point out are not problems at all and thus, that they don't need fixing. Vim has a bunch of low-level limitations/problems that I would like to see fixed before making it prettier: archaic keypress handling, lack of multithreading, limited RTL support, dumb terminal in the GUI version, wonky and slow syntax engine, poor external interface… These things are way more important, IMO, than changing the color of the bike shed. I hated every second I spent in ST2, even more with vintage mode enabled and vintageEx installed. I really don't want Vim to go that direction and, I believe, its author doesn't want that either.

edanm 14y ago

I wonder, do you agree with the statement: "If someone remade vim so that you can have variable fonts and some more gui goodness, that would be a good thing"? I'm not saying changing the core of vim. I'm saying, let plugins have more options in terms of how they draw things on-screen? Because, if it's optional, I can't see why that would bother anyone. Unless you think it is simply impossible for anything other than the plain-text, single-font way vim works to have any advantage. We have stylistic differences, obviously. I've used both vim as my main editor, complete with a very customized .vimrc, as well as dozens of other editors (less heavily), including Sublime Text. I love vim, and it works wonders for me. But I think it's odd that you literally find nothing wrong with vim or nothing that can be improved. As for "getting users", I understand that you personally don't care. I care only inasmuch as I think the basic way of editing text that vim gives users is so much better, that I wish more people used it. I also care because I'd love something like Sublime, with a proper vim mode that actually manages to do most of what vim does, and that doesn't exist.

johncoltrane 14y ago
> "do you agree with the statement: "If someone remade vim so that you can have variable fonts and some more gui goodness, that would be a good thing"?" I don't think I would use it. But I'm curious by nature and I would probably try it out anyway, just like I did with all the ST2/Coda/Espresso/Vico/Chocolat/HappyEdit/Whatever that popped up in the last 2 to 3 years. At some point in the past, I felt limited as a TextMate user and I "needed" a change which I happily found in Vim. The benefits, for me, were/are absolutely huge, but I would switch again if the benefits were comparable. Cosmetic changes are not enough for me obviously and, IMO, the things you propose would a) not provide any noticeable benefit and b) work only in GVim/MacVim which makes no sense at all considering Vim's philosophy. But putting all of your ideas into a new project… I'd say "Go for it!". Keep in mind, though, that for a lot of Vim users the ability to run Vim in a terminal is absolutely mandatory. A shiny new GUI would be worse than useless. The "optional" part of your comment is actually very important. Adding all those things as options would take a lot of time and effort and probably a lot of rewriting for… almost nothing. > "But I think it's odd that you literally find nothing wrong with vim or nothing that can be improved." I think that the problems you point out are not problems at all and thus, that they don't need fixing. Vim has a bunch of low-level limitations/problems that I would like to see fixed before making it prettier: archaic keypress handling, lack of multithreading, limited RTL support, dumb terminal in the GUI version, wonky and slow syntax engine, poor external interface… These things are way more important, IMO, than changing the color of the bike shed. I hated every second I spent in ST2, even more with vintage mode enabled and vintageEx installed. I really don't want Vim to go that direction and, I believe, its author doesn't want that either.