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Re: Vim 9 - but older releases preferred

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On 11/16/25 10:01, Eli the Bearded wrote:
> In comp.editors, Janis Papanagnou replied to me:
>> [ Sorry for the response per email, Eli. - I'm not used to my
>>     new system environment, and it's not yet set up completely. ]
> 
> Usenet is not realtime. Slow is fine. Not necessary to post and email a
> response, and doing so without mentioning it is annoying.

(I want to discuss things here _in Usenet_ not per email. The
prior sent mail was a GUI-typo accident with the new software!
Sorry again if I've annoyed you.)

>> ...
> 
> Modelines change settings in your editor. When a modeline comes from a
> file you didn't write, the changes may be unpleasant. [...]

Yes, you're right that files may come from third-party sources.

> 
>>> Like I said, I've been using vim 9 for a while and don't notice
>>> differences. I prefer a mostly vi compatible vim experience, however.
>> Curious about 'compatible'...
>> As I understand it you don't get any Vim feature with that?
>> So you're actually just using old "Vi" functionality? (With
>> Vi's old bugs fixed, I suppose.)
> 
> No. Compatible means that most everything vi does, [...]
> [...] But things that would be no-ops, errors or
> undefined behavior in vi, those can still work vim-style.

Ah, okay.

> 
> Some notable examples that I use regularly:
> 
>   * The g family of commands, like gq<movement> to reformat text. The
>     "g" key is unassigned in vi

Yes. A very huge and diverse family, actually.

A similar (previously unused and IMO useful) letter-family
is 'v', 'V', Ctrl-'V'.

>   * Similarly ctrl-a / ctrl-x number increment / decrement

Occasionally it's useful. - Mind surprises, though, e.g. when
trying to increment the month or day component of an ISO date!
(Been there.)

But very useful also if you want to add a certain offset, say 7,
to many fields, '7' 'Ctrl-A' then move to other places and just
repeat (with '.').

>   * Whole word search with # and * (but I remap the * to _)

I'm sure I've used '#' in Vi (in pre-Vim era). And someone in
Usenet mentioned that '*' was also present in Vi. (The latter
was new to me.) Maybe it's been added over the course of time.

> [...]
>> [...]
> 
> There are many Bram extensions I don't get a lot of value from,
> like vimscript,

I do no scripting in Vim.

> syntax highlighting,

This is something I consider very useful to get a quick overview
of the text structure. It also catches lexical and some types of
syntax errors.

> gvim, mouse integration,

All that mouse-clicky-clacky things severely reduces editing speed;
the primary domain of Vi/Vim achieved with the keyboard.

I use Gvim occasionally if some GUI application asks me for a text
viewer to select; vim terminal versions typically don't work here.

> and colors in my editor (eg search highlighting).

I'm ambivalent here; it's useful but the way it's implemented isn't
very appealing in some cases.

> But there are good things too, as I mentioned above. [...]

Yes, indeed.

Janis

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Thread

Vim 9 - but older releases preferred Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2025-11-15 22:58 +0100
  Re: Vim 9 - but older releases preferred Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> - 2025-11-15 23:01 +0000
    Re: Vim 9 - but older releases preferred Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2025-11-16 08:07 +0100
      Re: Vim 9 - but older releases preferred Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> - 2025-11-16 09:01 +0000
        Re: Vim 9 - but older releases preferred Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2025-11-16 11:42 +0100
          Re: Vim 9 - but older releases preferred Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> - 2025-11-17 02:23 +0000
            Re: Vim 9 - but older releases preferred Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> - 2025-11-17 20:19 +0000
      Re: Vim 9 - but older releases preferred Anton Shepelev <anton.txt@gmail.moc> - 2025-12-06 01:26 +0300
        Re: Vim 9 - but older releases preferred "Jeffrey H. Johnson" <johnsonjh.dev@gmail.com> - 2025-12-08 03:15 +0000
  Re: Vim 9 - but older releases preferred John McCue <jmclnx@gmail.com.invalid> - 2025-11-16 13:46 +0000

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