LWN: Comments on "Vim 8.1 released"

Vim 8.1 released

Shugyousha — Fri, 25 May 2018 12:52:40 +0000

I feel like having tmux (and tiling WMs) makes the terminal-in-vim functionality superfluous... I didn't agree with its inclusion in Neovim and I don't agree with it here.

I should probably switch to https://github.com/martanne/vis full-time soon.

An embedded terminal

edgewood — Thu, 24 May 2018 17:58:04 +0000

Did neovim maintain compatibility out of courtesy, or out of self-interest, so that they could keep the value of being (mostly) vim-compatible?

Regardless of the reason to mostly maintain compatibility, neovim broke it when there was a compelling technical reason to do so. Therefore they shouldn't complain if vim adds neovim features, but chooses an incompatible implementation for a compelling technical reason.

Vim 8.1 released

mgedmin — Thu, 24 May 2018 16:07:08 +0000

Partially! I use vim as a multiplexer sometimes merely because I find the Ctrl-W based hot keys easier to remember.

What vim doesn't have (and probably will never have) is support for detaching/reattaching sessions, so tmux/screen remain useful.

An embedded terminal

pj — Thu, 24 May 2018 14:57:18 +0000

Neovim forked vim, but was quite careful about keeping a lot of backwards compatability - except, of course, where functionality was added. It would seem to be courteous to return the favor, don't you think?

Vim 8.1 released

pweissbrod — Tue, 22 May 2018 15:36:22 +0000

Interesting to see if this subsumes the need for tmux

An embedded terminal

edgewood — Mon, 21 May 2018 00:14:12 +0000

Neovim forked from vim. It seems odd for a neovim supporter to complain about incompatibility. <grin>

If the reason for an incompatible implementation was just to be petty, that wouldn't be good. I admit I don't know the reason, but that doesn't strike me as something Bram would do.

Vim 8.1 released

ceplm — Sun, 20 May 2018 22:34:48 +0000

Even Neovim inside of vim ;) https://mcepl.fedorapeople.org/tmp/neovim-in-vim.png

An embedded terminal

jpnp — Sun, 20 May 2018 21:25:14 +0000

Of course embedding a terminal in an editor was hardly invented by neovim, but it was brought to the vim world. I don't think Bram would include such a feature just because Emacs has it. For a long time Bram wasn't interested in adding any kind of asynchronous support to vim, despite the obvious desire from plugin authors. Neovim forks and adds the feature, then lo and behold along comes vim 8.0 with it's own (incompatible) async support. That still leaves neovim with a popular embedded terminal...

Does it really matter? No, in fact it surely validates neovim's design, but it would be nice if every time vim copies a feature it doesn't make it incompatible with neovim's implementation.

An embedded terminal

mageta — Sun, 20 May 2018 20:52:32 +0000

Yeah, because having a terminal in an editor is such a new concept.

Vim 8.1 released

ianmcc — Sun, 20 May 2018 14:50:25 +0000

Si finally vim can run emacs!

Vim 8.1 released

meyert — Sun, 20 May 2018 07:32:17 +0000

So can I start vim in vim?

An embedded terminal

orev — Sun, 20 May 2018 01:38:06 +0000

Does it really matter? Good ideas are good, so why not use them? (And you’re wrong anyway since emacs has had this for a much longer time)

Vim 8.1 released

andrewsh — Sat, 19 May 2018 16:52:40 +0000

Maybe the other way ‘round?

Vim 8.1 released

AndreiG — Sat, 19 May 2018 16:48:18 +0000

Finally, emacs users can use vim !

An embedded terminal

jpnp — Sat, 19 May 2018 13:05:42 +0000

Gosh, I wonder where they got that idea?