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.

DATE	NEWS
January 31st	DRAFT to Update of Vim License: Bram says: "There have been a few remarks on the updated Vim license. Although only details have been changed, this could still change the meaning of the license. Therefore I consider it necessary to again ask all Vim developers to check out this new version. The intention of this new license is to make more people happy about how Vim can be distributed. ..." So read more about it and make your voice heard.
January 21st	Financial report for ICCF Holland available. http://iccf-holland.org/2001.html (1, 2) The ICCF is the organization which supports children suffering from AIDS. The author of Vim once helped for a year at the KCC (Kibaale Children's Centre) and is trying to raise funds for them through the ICCF.
January 8th	Which editors sucks most? Vassilii Khachaturov vassilii@tarunz.org extracts posts from comp.editors to establish an "Editors-Sucks-Rules-O-Meter" on his page http://www.tarunz.org/~vassilii/srom/ So voice your optionion by posting to comp.editors! ;-)
January 8th	Welsh translation of the short description on Vim in six kilobytes. Translated by Magnus Forrester-Barker map601(at)bangor.ac.uk - thanks! :-)
January 7th	Indonesian translation of the short description on Vim in six kilobytes. Translated by Dewara Sianipar dewara@gmx.net - thanks! :-)
January 3rd	Discussion on slashdot about Vim's license: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/01/02/0718243&mode=thread
January 1st	Article by Bram Moolenaar in the Free Software Magazine (FSM): http://www.rons.net.cn/english/FSM/vim (PDF)
December 21st	Donations for the children in Uganda can now be done through the German organization MISEREOR. MISEREOR then sends the money directly to the project in Uganda - without taking any fees for this. Using this method allows for getting a tax reduction in Germany. This can also be used for sponsoring a child. More information can be found by using one of these links: http://www.vim.org/iccf/germany.html http://iccf-holland.org/germany.html http://www.iccf.nl/germany.html
December 2nd,7th	GNOME VIM bonobo component: Jason Hildebrand jason(at)peaceworks.ca announced a new Bonobo component that wraps vim via a number of the GtkHTML interfaces. This means that with a little bit of help Ximians Evolution can be made use use vim for editing emails rather than the current default editor. It is also a very nice example of the power of components. GNOME Vim page: http://www.opensky.ca/gnome-vim/ screenshot of Evolution with "Vim inside": http://www.opensky.ca/gnome-vim/gnome-vim.png
October 19th	http://www.idg.net/go.cgi?id=576057 (*) A small article mentioning Vim as a cross-platform tool by Eric Foster-Johnson including a link to his and Steve Oualline's Vim CookBook.
October 14th	Vim scores first on Linux Journal: Linux Journal 91: 2001 Reader's Choice Awards: Favorite Text Editor: 1. vim 2. vi (and clones) 3. GNU Emacs We took your advice from last year and split vi and vim into separate categories. This time around vim wins with twice as many votes. mcedit took the write-in vote." http://www2.linuxjournal.com/lj-issues/issue91/5441.html
October 12th	Interview with Vim's Bram Moolenaar by Armijn Hemel 09-10-2001: http://e-zine.nluug.nl/hold.html?cid=180 >(*)
September 27th	The Vim User Manual consists of many files. For those of you who want one BIG File there now is one, reading for printing on this page http://www.erebus.demon.nl/vim/ Thanks to Dion Nicolaas dion(at)erebus.demon.nl for creating it!
September 2nd	An article appeared on the Linux Journal web site: "Vi IMproved--Vim and Happy Hacking Keyboard Lite 2" Written by Don Marti. Despite the title it's also a review on the Vim book by Steve Oualline. You can read it here: http://www.linuxjournal.com/articles/linux_review/0055.html (local copy)
September 1st	The Vim-5.6 Reference Guide is back! (I snatched if off the page from Nguyên-Đai Quư quy@vnlinux.org). Does anyone want to update this to Vim-5.8? By the way - what ever happened to Oleg Raisky? Where are his homepage and course on "Vim Regular Expressions 101" now?
August 28th	There's a new search engine for www.vim.org available at http://search.musin.de/?site=vim Please give it a test!
August 23rd	Afrikaans translation of the short description on Vim in six kilobytes. Translated by Piet Delport siberiyan@mweb.co.za - thanks!
August 11th	Addicted to Vim - 010904: 60+ addictions so far - 101 there should be. Please send in your addiction - or those of your fellow vim addicts!
August 1st	http://vim.sf.net - the link that got lost along the way... please check out this site, folks, for it will become *the* Vim site, and www.vim.org will be just another mirror (as it is, anyway ;-).
July 28th	http://sukria.online.fr/print.php3?q=vim by Alexis Sukrieh
July 28th	Screenshots of Vim-5.7 on MacOSX. http://macosx.sage-tech.net/screens/vim-shot1.jpg http://macosx.sage-tech.net/screens/vim-shot2.jpg
July 28th	http://www.linuxfocus.org/English/May2000/article153.shtml I could not get at this article. Is that site down? Hmm...
July 28th	http://www.escomposlinux.org/sromero/articulos/sololnx/sololnx3.html Another article on Vim-5.3.7 - in Spanish, by Santiago Romero (September 2000).
July 28th	http://www.kit.vslib.cz/~satrapa/docs/vim/ "The text is meant to be an introduction course, not complete documentation (...) It is based on vim 5.3." It contains both basic operations, as well as some advanced topics. written by Pavel Satrapa Pavel.Satrapa@vslib.cz
June 19th	Vim Book Errata List now available: http://www.moolenaar.net/vim_errata.html If you find a mistake in the book that isn't in the list yet, or perhaps an item in the errata list that's wrong, send Bram a message. Preferably use the same format as used on the page.
June 13th	Vim is now a topic on Wikipedia, "a collaborative project to produce a complete encyclopedia from scratch": http://www2.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?VIM The idea is that anyone can edit the webpages, so everyone can add info when he feels like it. have fun!
May 25th	Linux Journal, June 2001, "Algorithms in Africa", by Wayne Marshall: http://www2.linuxjournal.com/lj-issues/issue86/4657.html (local copies: HTML and Text) Bram: "It is about the relation between software in third world countries. It's very well written and gives you a good idea of what people in Africa really need. The last section is about Vim in Uganda."
May 8th	A short overview to the Vim-6.0ae - options and their defaults. Hopefully someone has some use for this.
May 3rd	An Interview with Vim Authors - translated to Chinese (GB) by slimzhao@21cn.com
April 23rd	"What is your favorite Tcl programming editor or environment?" Results: http://www.ajubasolutions.com/poll/poll-results.tcl?poll_id=281
April 11	The Vim Book is expected to ship on April 18th. Author: Steve Oualline; ISBN: 0735710015; Pubilisher For more info see page http://www.iccf.nl/click5.html
March 26 March 13	Interesting screenshot: Vim-6.0w with UTF-8 text by Alexey Marinichev lyosha@math.ucr.edu This screenshot shows Vim-6.0w within an xterm from the XFree86-4 distribution. The main window is split vertically, and each subwindow shows text in several fonts/languages: Japanese, Hebrew, Polish, Russian, Thai; English, French, and German.
March 07	"Vim Regular Expressions 101" - a guide to regular expressions (aka "patterns") in Vim. http://physlab.sci.ccny.cuny.edu/%7Eorycc/vim-regex.html [obsolete] http://www.sci.ccny.cuny.edu/%7Eorycc/vim-regex.html [obsolete] written by Oleg Raisky olrcc@scisun.sci.ccny.cuny.edu

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 www.vim.org]

	SEARCH Search www.vim.org for words.
News and Overview
Short Description - Vim explained in 6 kilobytes - available in the following languages: Afrikaans, Bulgarian, Chinese (Mandarin), Chinese (Big5), Czech, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Slovak, Turkish, Ukrainian. Welsh. Yiddish. (Translations welcome! Swahili 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:

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

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

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 :-)

	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