Post by Axel ReichertAs I am an adherent to the other editor, this reminds me on the
There are many, many Emacs relatives/clones/... available. Most share a
basic set of short-cuts and some basic usage paradigms, so even with,
say, "atto", see
https://github.com/hughbarney
a standard Emacs user will feel right at home. However, most clones
clearly and severly lack GNU Emacs's extensibility, see
https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs-paper.html#SEC25
Since my vi/vim/gvim knowledge is very basic (probably equivalent to
using atto's features), I have no idea about how the situation is on the
Could you (or others) please comment how common it is in vi-land to use
a bunch of extension packages and have configuration files larger than,
say, 10 kB to customize every imaginable feature to one's peculiar
needs?
I cannot comment on any "common" usages, I can only speak for myself
(and from what I've seen from specific folks), and here specifically
from the vi or vim/gvim perspective.
Personally I (as a proficient and experienced vi and vim user) never
had the need for any "extension package". All I need to edit sources
of whatever syntax or type is the standard installation (vim/gvim in
my case). I have some options set as standard in my .vimrc resource
file that I generally use for almost all text source types, literally
just these settings
set noruler
set noic
set modeline
set modelines=5
set smc=10000
set ts=4
set sw=4
and that's it. (If in specific situations I want different behavior I
just overwrite the default in my editor session by, say, :set ic
for case-insensitive searches.)
The point with vi/vim is that it has everything for "basic" _editing_;
"basic" in quotes, because its editing power is (IMO) extraordinary.
(I recall someone (LdO?) posting some (I think) lisp code that serves
some purpose for Emacs, but in Vim that was a standard feature so no
necessity to configure or implement it or load it as some additional
package in the first place.)
I know of folks that have a set of macros defined for their projects;
for language specific editing and convenience features, for example
macros that react on keywords, build the whole constructs, and place
the cursor at appropriate places. (And other things like that.) Such
definitions I've seen typically were about one or two screen pages.
I also know folks who have defined macros to _create an application_
(e.g. a diary/log book with time stamps, specific formatting, etc.);
all this done with a couple macros in Vim. - But mind that this is
exceeding pure editing; it's actually creating specific applications
using the Vim tool. (Anyway impressive to see how easy such things
can be done with that editor, and mostly just with simple macros.)
I recall that I once added code[*] to a syntax definition file for
the Unix shell language to make it possible to correctly highlight
not only the shell code syntax but also embedded Awk code syntax;
i.e. highlighting two different syntaxes in one source. (But that
also wasn't much code; just a few lines IIRC.)
Re (how common it is in vi-land to use a bunch of extension packages):
=> none (in my case), just a few simple adjustments and user settings
Re (and have configuration files larger than, say, 10 kB):
=> none (in my case and I've not seen such large files for Vim; YMMV)
Re (to customize every imaginable feature to one's peculiar needs?)
=> this can't be generally answered; I'm sure there's geeks that
configure Vim, say, to play chess (or have other pathological uses)
(You may want to rephrase your question without the unanswerable
"every imaginable feature" for a more realistic scenario.)
But Vim supports besides other standard mechanisms also a scripting
language, so you can do anything to any complexity (if you feel the
need or some urge for it).
Janis
[*] It was code that Kaz may have provided, if I recall correctly.
(Apologies if it was someone else.)