Last update: Sun Nov 11 02:40:00 MET 2001

VIM - Mailing Lists

010108: Currently there are eight mailing lists on Vim.

991104: Mailing list about Macintosh development has been moved to vim-mac@vim.org - so you can (un)subscribe by email now.

990825: Many mailers break the threading in maillists. Please use a mailer which gives a reference to the previous mail! I suggest to use highly customizable mailers which can be used on *every* terminal: elm, pine, and most of all, mutt (see also the section on mutt below).

VIM Maillists - Overview

VIM Maillists - Maillist on vim.org

There are five mailing lists about VIM on vim.org:

	 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
	vim-jp@sandalwood.net         Vim for Japanese speaking users

NOTE: Before sending mail to the lists, you must subscribe ! Mails from unsubscribed *addresses* are rejected. Yes, that's a feature. Hope you understand.

To get help in an email - send a mail to vim-help@vim.org.

VIM Maillists - Maillist not on vim.org

There is one more lists not on vim.org:

	vim-fr@yahoogroups.com      Vim for French   speaking users
	vim-jp@sandalwood.net       Vim for Japanese speaking users

For subscription to vim-fr take a look at the info page to vim-fr:
http://www.yahoogroups.com/list/vim-fr/info.html

VIM Maillists - List Descriptions

vim-announce@vim.org: Purpose: Announcements only. New releases, important patches and bug reports. Change of important mail and web addresses.; Status In:; Subscription required to post: yes - but posting is allowed only for *some* people. If you want to post then please ask the maintainer for permission.; Status Out:; All mails are sent to its subscribers *and* all subscribers of the other maillists ("vim", "vim-dev", and "vim-multibyte").
vim@vim.org: Purpose: The "Vim help List".; Status In: Subscription required to post: yes. Everyone is welcome to join and ask questions about Vim and its usage. You are especially welcome to answer questions, too. :-) But to avoid frustration for readers you are advised to read both the VI FAQ and the VIM FAQ before you post. Thank you!; Status Out: All mails are sent to subscribers.
vim-dev@vim.org: Purpose: Discussion of Vim Development.; Discussion of new features and possible bugs. Development of macros, patches and setup files.; Status In: Subscription required to post: yes. You should be able to use a compiler and try to avoid asking FAQs. You know about termcap and terminfo. You can write an OS kernel with "cat > kernel". You do not use Emacs. ;-); Status Out: All mails are sent to subscribers.
vim-mac@vim.org: Purpose: Discussion of Vim Development on the Macintosh.; Status In: Subscription required to post: yes.; Status Out: All mails are sent to subscribers.
vim-multibyte@vim.org: Purpose: Discussion of Vim Development for Multibyte Support.; Status In: Subscription required to post: yes.; Status Out: All mails are sent to subscribers.

Vim Maillists - Subscribing and Unsubscribing

Before you are allowed to post to any of the mailing lists you must first "subscribe" to them. Subscribing and unsubscribing to any of the three mailing lists is done by sending a mail (empty one suffices) to an address which is similar to the listname:

	listname-subscribe@vim.org
eg      vim-subscribe@vim.org

If you are using UNIX then these commands should be easiest to (un)subscribe:

Subscribing to "vim": echo vim rules | mail vim-subscribe@vim.org
Unsubscribing to "vim": echo seeya | mail vim-unsubscribe@vim.org

Commands to subscribe and unsubscribe to the other lists are left to the reader as an exercise. :-)

VIM Maillists - Maintenance

The maintainer of the Vim mailing lists is

	Özgür "Öç/Oetsch" Kesim oec@vim.org

Please note that Oetsch is working fulltime and his maintenance of the lists is a just a hobby. Responses to emails about the mailing lists might take a while. Please be patient! Thankyou.

Please do not contact the maintainer to subscribe ot unsubscribe you. There are so many subscriptions that it cannot be processed by one person. That's exactly the reason why an maillist software is being used. Please use it! Thankyou.

However, as posting to vim-announce requires special permission from the maintainer. So there's a reason for you to contact him.

The mailing lists are managed with qmail and ezmlm; the following page has some info on this:

http://www.math.fu-berlin.de/~kesim/ezmlm/

Vim Mailing Lists - Talk Convention

Edit your mails!
Important: Please take a little time to "edit your mails". Remove superfluous data, and get the context right. Please read my Guide on Editing Emails to understand why and for some tips on editing. Thanks!

Then, please notice that the following text occurs quite often:

Attach patches - but only if they are small! [000119,011111]
You can send your patches to the maillist - but please do only if the patch is small. How big is "small"? Well, if the patch just changes a few lines then the "diff" will be some 50 lines. So I consider a patch too big for the mailing list if it has over 100 lines. Let's say the limit should be 10K. YMMV. Everything over this line should be compressed (GNU Zip preferred) and *attached*.
Whenever possible, attach the patch - so it can easily be saved to disk or automatically removed on replies and forwards. This also allows for detection on mailing lists which impose a restriction on attachment size or even for automatic removal of such. Please do not append huge data to messages - this can result in a ban on mailing lists.
If the patch is big then please do not distribute it on the lists - but send them to the author directly.
Should you want to make the patch available for everyone then we sugegst that you upload the patch to some ftp or web site and simply add its address to the message, eg:

     You can find the patch on my site:
     ftp://myhost.domain/dir/file.tar.gz
 or http://myhost.domain/dir/file.tar.gz

And please remember that you can always send your patches directly to the author. Very often there is no need to send a patch to the list.
Thank you for following these rules!

Give references!

	:help tag
	:set options=value
	RTFFAQ
	RTFM

And this is what it means:

:help tagname: This means "enter this help command and you shall find an explanatory text which contains the answer to your question". This is often used to answer the request to some feature that already exists. In these cases we just answer by pointing to the section in the help file which describes this feature. So just enter ":help tagname" and read the stuff there. If you do not like the feature the way it is then we ask you to give a definition and a few examples of the way you like it to be. This helps a lot when redesigning a feature!
":set option=value": This means "enter the command to set the option "option" to the value "value". This change should then change the behaviour of a command and thus enable you to do with it what you desired.
RTFFAQ: RTFFAQ means "read the fine [list of] frequently asked questions [and answers] in the "VIM FAQ"". Read it and you shall find the answer!; URL of VIM FAQ:; http://www.vim.org/faq/
RTFM: RTFM means "read the friendly manual". Usually used when someone repeatedly asked for info which is in the manual and some other help text (such as the Vi FAQ and Vim FAQ). Please take a look at them again and you will probably find the answer. And if you should use it then please add a pointer. Thanks!

Thank you for understanding! :-)

VIM Mailing List FAQs

Some questions get asked much too often on the mailing lists. Please try to avoid them by reading the answers here. Thanks!

VIM Distribution: Q: Where can I get VIM?; A: You get VIM from several sites. These are all listed in the VIM Distribution page:; URL: http://www.vim.org/dist.html
Rejected Posts: Q: Why are my mails rejected?; A: You may be sending as "another one", ie with your name but with a different address. This happens when you have subscribed as user@hostA.domain - but you may be sending mails as user@hostB.domain, ie sending from another host. The mailing list software treats this as different addresses and thus as different people. In that case you need to subscribe from hostB, too, before mails from that address are accepted. The best way is to send the subscription command and all further mails *without* the host name. Some mailers can be configured to drop the host names which is very convenient and thus recommended. Ask your postmaster about this!
Changing accounts [970818,990303]
Subscribe Check - Automatic Unsubscription: Q: Am I still on one of the vim mailing list?; A: First off, do not send requests to the mailing list manager! Although the easiest way to find out about your subscription is to send a mail to the mailing lists and see if these bounce back to you - do not send test messges to the list - this is annoying.; Q: But my account will be terminated soon - I really need to know. How can I find out NOW?; A: Relax. Mails sent out to you will bounce back to the mailing list software, and if and a bounced mail from you will unsubscribe you from the mailing list automagically. But you need to worry much about unsubscribing - if your account should terminate then the mailing list software will unsubcribe you automagically after it was not able to deliver mails to you for two weeks.
Posting announcements: Q: How can I post an announcement (send a mail to "vim-announce")?; A: Only a few people can send mail to vim-announce; if you need to so, too, then please contact the list maintainer !
Mailing List Archive: Situation: You are not subscribed to any of the mailing lists but you want to take a look at them just the same. Or you have unsubscribed for a while and you want to catch up with the latest posts.; Q: Is there an archive of the mailing lists?; A: Yes, for each mailing list there is an archive. See the section about "VIM Mailing List Archive" below.
Mailing List Digests [971027]: Situation: You don't want to be disturbed by lots of mails from the mailing lists. Instead, you prefer to get all posted mails once a week - as a digest.; Q: Can I get vim mails as a digest?; A: Yes - instead of subscribing to vim@vim.org and/or vim-dev@vim.org, subscribe to vim-digest@vim.org or vim-dev-digest@vim.org respectively.
Licence to post [970910]: Situation: You want to be able to post to the mailing list, but you do not want to receive all those replies.; Q: Can I get a licence to post - but not receive any replies from the list?; A: No. Repeat: NO! This would defaet the very purpose of a mailing list - a simply reply to the list shall notify *all* members on the list. We know this could be done if we used "group reply" and all that, but it simply imposes more problems. Please take the time to subscribe and unsubscribe as needed - it has been made sooo simple. It's no more than sending an empty mail to the correct address. Thank you for your consideration!
Mailing List Software [971008]: Q: Which sotware is used to handle the vim mailing lists?; A: EZMLM and qmail.
Mailing List Host [971008,011011]: Q: What kind of machine do the mailing lists run on?; A: In 1997 the lists were processed on and sent out from babayaga.math.fu-berlin.de, a 386SX-25 PC running Linux. [The name "babayaga" refers to a witch that appears in fairy tales from Russia as the machine babayaga resides in the student cafe of the department nicknamed "the witches' cellar" as it is "wizard friendly". :-)] In 1999 the mail host changed to foobar.math.fu-berlin.de. It, too, is processing the mials with qmail and ezmlm.
Subject field [990101]: Q: Couldn't you add STRING to the Subject line of the mailing list?; A: Yes - but we won't, as this will introduce more problems than it solves. If you need such a string as your mailer is not smart enough to filter out mails from vim.org then you either need a *real* filter or a better mailer. Sorry.; See also: Life on Mailing List - Subject Munging

VIM Mailing List Archive

[981104,010201] The Vim Maillists are archived at "yahoogroups.com" (formerly at egroups.com which is now part of yahoo.com!):

	http://www.yahoogroups.com/list/vimannounce
	http://www.yahoogroups.com/list/vim
	http://www.yahoogroups.com/list/vimdev
	http://www.yahoogroups.com/list/vim-fr
	http://www.yahoogroups.com/list/vim-mac
	http://www.yahoogroups.com/list/vim-multibyte
	http://www.yahoogroups.com/list/vim-vms/

For the record: Some time ago there was an archive for vim mailing lists at the "Insitute of Informatikk" (institute of computer science) at the University of Bergen, Norway. However, this archive is no longer in function. This archive was maintained by Eivind Gjelseth eivind@ii.uib.no using the software MHonArc which is based on perl. Thanks for this, Eivind!

Mailing List - using the mailer "mutt"

Mutt is a mailer which understands "threading", that is it can group relating messages together - properly!

Here are two sample windowshot for you:

The first windowshot shows my mail folder with all the mails from the vim mailing list:

Mails in red are "From: Bram", mails in yellow have been sent with a broken Message-ID. Mails in dark blue are those which I have replied to (marked with an 'r'). And the mails in light green are from myself (these are also flagged with 'F'). Mails in dark green are CCed to me at guckes@vim.org (that's why you get to see it twice in the index). And mails in yellow on magenta have been sent by bad mail programs...

The second windowshot shows mutt's internal pager displaying a message:

[a sample mail viewed by the internal pager]

The header is limited to the header lines that *I* am interested in to see, and it shows in the order I prefer; they are also colored by the colors that I have set. (Hey, you might not want any colors at all - fine, because no colors is the default with mutt.)

Quoted text is shown in its own color - and it can be hidden from view with a command (just type 'T' for the command "toggle-quoted").

Addresses are shown in its own color, too. (Email addresses have a different color than FTP addresses or Web addresses.)

Even the signature gets its own color (if you wish); it can even be stripped off automatically on replies.

And the blue tilde characters show that those lines do not belong to the message any more.

By the way, you can view each MIME part of the message on its own, and delete, print, or just save it. You can also "pipe" each attachment to some arbitrary program or script.

Please give this mailer a try. It works on every terminal and is really fast. It understands PGP, POP and IMAP. And much more.

About a hundred people on the vim maillists are using mutt with vim already. :-)

One more example:

Mutt allows to "limit" the index of messages to only messages which "match" a "pattern". This is quite useful, eg to quickly get a list of only the mails "From: Bram" which are announcements of the "available" new versions of version "6.0"; and, of course, you don't want to see the replies (which usuyally have mostly "re:" in the Subject line and occasionally a changed Subject, indicated by "was:"):

   ~f bram ~s available ~s 6.0 ! ~s re: ! ~s was:

Today [010514] this would give me this list in my folder "VIM":

Mutt 1.2.5i: =IN.VIM (threads) [37/28179] [N=24772,*=0,new=10]
13931   X 000709 Bram Moolenaar    ( 71) Vim 6.0a alpha available               14350   X 000716 Bram Moolenaar    ( 65) Vim 6.0b alpha available
14586   X 000723 Bram Moolenaar    ( 51) Vim 6.0c alpha available
14758   X 000730 Bram Moolenaar    ( 56) Vim 6.0d alpha available               14957   X 000806 Bram Moolenaar    ( 59) Vim 6.0e alpha available
15146   X 000813 Bram Moolenaar    ( 93) Vim 6.0f alpha available
15323   X 000820 Bram Moolenaar    (129) Vim 6.0g alpha available
15697   X 000831 Bram Moolenaar    (139) Vim 6.0h alpha available
17032   X 001015 Bram Moolenaar    (196) Vim 6.0i alpha available
17331   X 001022 Bram Moolenaar    (144) Vim 6.0j alpha available
17633   X 001029 Bram Moolenaar    (152) Vim 6.0k alpha available               17887   X 001105 Bram Moolenaar    (151) Vim 6.0l alpha available
18052   X 001112 Bram Moolenaar    (123) Vim 6.0m alpha available               18356   X 001119 Bram Moolenaar    (132) Vim 6.0n alpha available
18819   X 001203 Bram Moolenaar    (190) Vim 6.0o alpha available
19020   X 001210 Bram Moolenaar    (172) Vim 6.0p alpha available
19327   X 001217 Bram Moolenaar    (153) Vim 6.0q alpha available
19610   X 010101 Bram Moolenaar    (170) Vim 6.0r alpha available
20268   X 010114 Bram Moolenaar    (243) Vim 6.0s alpha available
20275   X 010114 Bram Moolenaar    (243) Vim 6.0s alpha available
20664   X 010121 Bram Moolenaar    (244) Vim 6.0t alpha available
21260   X 010204 Bram Moolenaar    (309) Vim 6.0u alpha available
21621   X 010211 Bram Moolenaar    (203) Vim 6.0v alpha available
22282   X 010226 Bram Moolenaar    (301) Vim 6.0w alpha available
23072   X 010311 Bram Moolenaar    (263) Vim 6.0x alpha available
23509   X 010318 Bram Moolenaar    (215) Vim 6.0y alpha available
23880   X 010324 Bram Moolenaar    (207) Vim 6.0z alpha available
24983   X 010416 Bram Moolenaar    (277) Vim version 6.0ab ALPHA available
25352   X 010422 Bram Moolenaar    (163) Vim version 6.0ac ALPHA available
25745   X 010429 Bram Moolenaar    (216) Vim version 6.0ad ALPHA available
25762   X 010430 Bram Moolenaar    (218) Vim version 6.0ad ALPHA available
26068   X 010506 Bram Moolenaar    (187) Vim version 6.0ae ALPHA available
26390   X 010513 Bram Moolenaar    (158) Vim version 6.0af ALPHA available
26756 N X 010520 Bram Moolenaar    (146) Vim version 6.0ag ALPHA available
27166 N X 010527 Bram Moolenaar    (165) Vim version 6.0ah ALPHA available      27516 N X 010603 Bram Moolenaar    (159) Vim version 6.0ai ALPHA available
27946 N X 010610 Bram Moolenaar    (180) Vim version 6.0aj ALPHA available
q:Quit  d:Del  u:Undel  s:Save  m:Mail  r:Reply  g:Group  ?:Help

So there you are then: Mutt finds thirty-seven messages (out of 28179) which match the given pattern. And this takes just under three seconds. (I am not making this up!)

[And, no, I do not know why Bram suddenly added the word "version" or made the string "alpha" upppercase - an extra warning, perhaps? ;-)]

Mailing List - Problems and Solutions

Broken Threading

Threading just works when each reply has a reference to the previous mail. Unfortunately, people are using mailers with drop this information or do not give any at all. This mostly seems due to mailers by MicroSoft. I therefore discourage their use. Please use a good mailer[tm] such as elm, pine, or (best!) mutt. Thankyou!

I wish I could name these mailers - but they apparently do not identify themselves with "X-Mailer" (are they afraid of anything?) or point to a DOS/Windows mailer that does it correctly, but I know none. Anyone?

Mailers that break the threading:

X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 8.5, Build 4.71.2173.0
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51C-SGI [en] (X11; I; IRIX 6.5 IP22)

Unknown mailers - example: X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-Incognito-SN: 599 X-Incognito-Version: 4.10.130 X-Mailer: Neoplanet Version: 2.0.1.398 X-mailer: Claris Emailer 1.1 X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 8.5, Build 4.71.2377.0

Back to the -> VIM Pages

URL:         http://www.math.fu-berlin.de/~guckes/vim/mail.html
URL:         http://www.vim.org/mail.html (mirror)
Created:     Fri Dec  1 00:00:00 MET 1995

Send feedback on this page to

Sven Guckes guckes@vim.org