Vim 7.3 released

[starnix17]

It's pretty cool that vim has had the same lead developer running the project for nearly 20 years.

It's also pretty cool how he asks for donations to be sent to nonprofits instead of himself.

I know this is irrelevant to the new release, but I think it's great that he still keeps it going after 20 years without any monetary gain (at least directly from the project).

[bajsejohannes]

Where the money goes depends on whether he has a job or not. Currently he works at Google, so it goes to a non-profit, but it has gone to him in the past.

http://www.vim.org/sponsor/index.php

[Calamitous]

Agreed. It shouldn't surprise me, but it still does every time Vim has a new release.

What's more, it's awesome that new releases still bring new functionality to the table.

[graywh]

s/lead//

Bram is the one and only developer of Vim.

[kgroll]

Persistent undo is my favorite new feature. The ability to close vim, reopen a file later, and then have all of the undo history still available is awesome. (Alternatively, I used to suspend vim instead of actually quit.)

To turn on persistent undo, I created a new directory called ~/.undo to store all of the undo history so that my working directories wouldn't get cluttered. Then in .vimrc, I add:

   set undofile
   set undodir=~/.undo

[prog]

I am happy to see the'relativenumber' option patch make it.

Quote from :h relativenumber

Show the line number relative to the line with the cursor in front of each line. Relative line numbers help you use the |count| you can precede some vertical motion commands (e.g. j k + -) with, without having to calculate it yourself. Especially useful in combination with other commands (e.g. y d c < > gq gw =).

[knodi]

Lua interface! (like World of Warcraft addons)

[shrikant]

Damn Bram, thank you, man!

[l0nwlf]

Python 3 interface FTW :)

[morphir]

what does that mean? So we can make plugins in Lua and Python?

[knodi]

Can't wait for the MacVim to move to 7.3

[travisjeffery]

http://github.com/b4winckler/macvim/downloads

More specifically, http://github.com/downloads/b4winckler/macvim/MacVim-7_3-53....

It's solid.

[sigzero]

My MacVim auto-updated to 7.3 when I launched it. :-)

I like the incremental improvements to things in this release. Kudos to Bram (and Bjorn for the Mac build).

[skullsplitter]

Persistent undo/redo FTMFW

[snprbob86]

In case you didn't know, Vim already had undo "trees". My mind was BLOWN when I discovered this: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/usr_32.html -- Never again accidentally lose work by accidentally breaking your redo change!

The online docs are still 7.2, so I had to dig into the source for a link to the new persistent undo/redo docs (search for "undo-persistence"):

http://code.google.com/p/vim/source/browse/runtime/doc/undo....

[compay]

Looking forward to playing around with the new Lua interface.

[jmaygarden]

Me too, but I'm getting a "E319: Sorry, the command is not available in this version" message when trying the new :lua* commands with the Windows version from the self-installing executable.

EDIT: Ah, the binary distribution is compiled with -lua (see :version). Cloning the Hg repository now...

[neorayn]

Even as a new Vim user I'm constantly wishing all my text editing had it's features.

Vimtutor is great, but for a general outlook for someone learning vim this post is spot on: http://yehudakatz.com/2010/07/29/everyone-who-tried-to-convi...

[rodh257]

Anyone got any links to good guides for getting into Vim if you are a Visual Studio user at present?

I keep hearing people talking about Vim and how it will change your life, mannn. Is there a good beginners guide?

[Sukotto]

I liked the visual guide: http://www.viemu.com/a_vi_vim_graphical_cheat_sheet_tutorial...

You can also get a vi plugin for Visual Studio http://www.viemu.com/ which is pretty cool.

[planckscnst]

Start by running vimtutor on just about any system that has Vim installed.

[mileszs]

Vimcasts are well done: http://vimcasts.org/

[jwoodbridge]

Peepcode has a pair of excellent starting with vim screen casts. I started a few weeks ago and they helped me a ton.

https://peepcode.com/products/smash-into-vim-i

[trylks]

Sorry for the noob question, but what does "python 3 interface" mean?

[Gonsalu]

It means that you can now write plugins for Vim using Python 3. It's worth noting that you could already write Vim plugins with Python 2.x.