W. Doug Bolden

What It Is

vi is one of those building blocks of Unix itself, a multi-line editor that replaced the single line editor ed, or at least built up upon it. Having used ed a couple of times, I have to say that text editing has come a long and valuable way.

Vim, then, is an improvement upon vi. It was created by Bram Moolenaar to enhance the experience. I have no idea how many improvements it began with, but it has now (in Vim 7) grown to include numerous things (including some of the best features of the vi base): syntax highlighting, macros, shell communication, multi-windows, multi-buffers, integrated console and windows modes, multi-OS formatting, extremely fast search (and replace) options, extreme customizability, tab-completion, online help, and vastly improved keyboard and mouse support.

It will never win any sort of beauty contests. It also has a steep learning curve. But, once commands are learned, one can move extremely fast and make fairly quick edits.

Why I Use It

Vim, for me, was combination of a couple of factors. First off, it is a Linux standard. This means that any install that I ever play with on Linux should have some version of it floating around. I have never tested this, but every version that I have ever played with HAS had it. Smaller distros, like Damn Small Linux might not have it. I also needed a single text-editing program that was available on multiple OSes (specifically Windows XP and Linux, my work and home computers, respectively), and whichever one I used needed to be able to use both the Windows and the Unix style of text formatting. Unix is the style that I normally use, but I needed to be able to output files with Windows style if I have to send files to other users. (Just so you know, most Unix systems automatically update and display Windows style formatting, while most Windows computers cannot display Unix style).

There were only two programs that met my criteria: Vim and Emacs. Vim ended up winning out for two reasons. First is the default Linux installation, which is a minor considering really. Most importantly was the fact that it supports both a window mode and a console mode, with nearl perfect compatibility. Emacs, I think, is best only in a windowed mode, making it a poor choice for editing over SSH or any other console environment.

Do not get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for Emacs, and it was, back when I first came unto Linux, my primary choice. But Emacs is largely driven by the philosophy of a "complete system in a box" and I do not need that. I do not need for my text editor to provide a shell, have a chess program built in, work as an egg timer and be my best friend. Vim's way of handling it, be a text editor which can call upon other programs as needed, just makes more sense to me and fits my notion that programs should be largely modular instead of trying to be large, bloated masses.

Vim also has excellent Python and Perl support. Since Python is going to be my primary script language for the next few months, it is just icing on the cake.

Final Words (for now)

I do not consider Vim for everyone. In fact, it seems to me that the average computer user rarely edits text in and of itself. Notepad, or whatever standard text editor comes with your window manager of choice, will probably serve the casual user better. They tend to have significantly less features, or not be as fast, but they are also more user friendly.

If you do have to do any console style text editing, though, or would like to use a very tried and true editor, I recommend it. Like I said, there is definitely a learning curve, but I have found it worth it.

Besides, don't you want to feel like a real man? (heheehhe).