To: vimdev@prz.tu-berlin.de
Subject: Vim version 5.0h ALPHA available!
Date: Tue, 13 May 97 12:55:47 +0200
From: Bram Moolenaar <mool@oce.nl>

Hello all,

Yet another update in the 5.0 series.  This time a theme on colors and Vi
compatibility.

The most important changes (quite a lot, again):

Vi and compatibility:
- ":set nocompatible" works now.
- INCOMPATIBLE: Start in 'compatible' mode when there is no ".vimrc" file.
  This was requested by many people.
- Always use multi-level undo, also in Vi compatible mode.  But 'u' flag
  in 'cpoptions' tells how "u" and CTRL-R work.
- 'updatecount' always defaults to non-zero, also for Vi compatible mode.
  This means there is a swap file, that can be used for recovery.
- For Unix: Put a dot before the swap file name, so it doesn't show in an
  ":!ls".
- Removed the requirement for a ":version" command in a .vimrc file.  It
  wasn't used for anything.  You can use ":if" to handle differences
  between versions.

New things:
- Changed the 'highlight' option default, to use highlight groups.  These
  highlight groups include color for cterm and gui, to make it look nice by
  default.  Try this in the GUI: ":highlight Normal guibg=lightgrey".  Nice eh?
- Added the 'guicursor' option, to set the cursor shape and color in various
  modes.
- Removed special settings for italic, bold and underline colors.  Can now
  be done with highlight groups.  This is cleaner.
- Added color names "fg", "foreground", "bg" and "background".  They get
  the current default fore-/background color.
- Made ":highlight NONE" reset all highlighting for one group.
- Implemented the 'softtabstop' option.  Makes it more easy to keep 'ts' at 8.
- Added "maxlines" and "minlines" commands to ":syntax sync".  This allows for
  more control and it's more clear what is happening than just "lines".
- Added: 'titlestring' and 'iconstring' options: define window and icon
  strings, when not empty.
- Added changes to produce a DLL version with Borland C++ (Aaron).

Changes:
- Renamed all color names to be the same on all systems.  For DOS-alikes
  this means, for example, that "Cyan" is now "DarkCyan".
- Reduced memory usage for syntax keywords by about a factor 100.  It's
  much faster loading a lot of keywords, but a bit slower displaying.
- Win32 GUI: No longer use vim.ini.  Everything can be set in the vimrc or
  gvimrc file.
- Changed the Perl interface (Gerassimoff).
- Changed: when using "%", "#", etc. in an expression, and the value is not
  available, just return an empty string, instead of giving an error
  message.
- For MS-DOS, Win32 and OS/2: When comparing file names for autocommands,
  don't make a difference between '/' and '\' for path separator.

Fixes:
- Fixed a lot of problems with modifiers.  Mapping things like <S-Tab>, <M-A>
  should work now.  When typing <S-Tab> in Insert mode, when it isn't mapped,
  inserted "<S-Tab>".  Now it works like a normal <Tab>, just like <C-Tab> and
  <M-Tab>.
- Fixed: the "Quit" window menu entry now only gives messages when there
  are modified buffers.  Still need to find a way to avoid the window being
  deleted when there are modified buffers!
- Fixed: When a color was not available, zero was used, which is often
  black.  Now use the default color.  Doesn't work for Win32 GUI (why?).
- Fixed: For Unix, restore three more signals.  And SIGINT is catched now,
  so CTRL-C in Ex mode doesnt make Vim exit.
- Fixed: A CTRL-C that breaks ":make" caused the errorfile not to be read
  (annoying when you want to handle what ":make" produced so far).
- Fixed: ""a5Y" yanked 25 lines instead of 5.
- Fixed: ":0;/pat" didn't find "pat" in line 1.
- Fixed: DJGPP and Win32 versions created swap files starting with a dot:
  ".swp".  Now an underscore is prepended: "_.swp".  This is required for
  FAT file sytems.

A number of additions for the Win32 GUI by Paul Moore:
- Fixed: Beeping didn't work properly.
- Font name now has the real point size, instead of 3/4 points.
- Read the "$VIM/rgb.txt" file for more color names.
- Font name now can contain a '.' in place of a space (no need for a
  backslash) and uses ':' to separate fields.  Example:
  "set guifont=Courier.New:h13:w7:u", "set guifont=Lucida.Console:h22:w13".
- additonal fix (not from Paul): reset font attributes first, otherwise
  it's impossible to stop underlining et al.


NOTE: To save me time and worries, this is a source-code only release.
Binary versions will be made for later versions.  You can compile it yourself,
if you can, all the required stuff is included.

You can find Vim 5.0h in the usual place, including the diff:

	ftp://ftp.oce.nl/pub/misc/vim/beta-test/unix/vim-5.0h.tar.gz
	ftp://ftp.oce.nl/pub/misc/vim/beta-test/unix/vim-50g.50h.diff.gz

And on the mirrors (within in a couple of days).

There is also this file, which currently only contains the Farsi source files:
	ftp://ftp.oce.nl/pub/misc/vim/beta-test/extra/vime-5.0h.tar.gz
Later this will contain things that don't go in the normal distribution, when
it becomes too large.  The src/Vim_vc4.mak file is another candidate.

Another NOTE: Please don't discuss this in the "vim" mailing list.
This is for for deveopers only!  At least for now.

Have fun!