Software update: VIM 6

devrandom writes: “After finally half a year of beta testing, the official release of VIM 6 is finally here.”:

VIM is an improved version of the VI editor included by default with almost all linux distributions. Because VI comes standard with UNIX, this is an important editor. If you master VI, you can go to any Unix box.

For VIM, below is what has been improved since version 5.8.

The number of changes is huge. These are just the main new items:

• Folding – momentarily hide part of the text
• Vertically split windows – mixed with horizontal splits
• Diff mode – show and remove differences between files
• Easy Vim: click-and-type – for those who really don’t like two modes
• User manual – learn to use Vim, reads like a book
• Flexible indenting – automatic indenting for any language
• Extended search patterns – more regexp power than you will need
• UTF-8 support – Unicode allows editing nearly all languages
• Multi-language support – translated messages and menus
• Plugin support – drop a script in a directory and you can use it
• Filetype plugins – an easy way to setup for editing a type of file
• File browser – browse directories, also on a terminal
• Editing files over a network – read and write a remote file directly
• command-line editing window – use any Vim command to edit an Ex command
• Debugging mode – debug your Vim functions and scripts
• Cursor in virtual position – edit tables and draw ASCII pictures
• Debugger interface – use Vim with Sun Visual Workshop
• Communication between Vims – let one Vim tell another Vim what to do
• Printing – print with syntax colors
• Quickfix extended – see error messages in a window and jump there
• Writing files improved – rename or copy to make a backup file
• Argument list – select groups of files to work on
• Restore a View – save the looks of a window and restore it later
• Color schemes – quickly switch between different color setups