Announcing: Vim (Vi IMproved) version 6.0ar BETA
Author: Bram Moolenaar et al.


Announcement
------------

This is a BETA test version of Vim. It is a huge step from Vim 5.x. Many,
many new features and improvements have been included. For an overview, with
a few screendumps, look here:

http://vim.sf.net/whyvim.php

After two weeks of beta testing it looks quite good. Some bugs have been
found and fixed. Bug reports are still coming in, thus beta testing will
continue (estimation: five or six weeks). Fortunately, no real big problems
have been found.

If you are upgrading from Vim 5.x, please look out for problems you run into.
Vim 6.0 is mostly backwards compatible, but not 100%. Check out ":help
version6" for known incompatibilities. If you find a problem that can be
solved, please report it to me.

Details about changes since the first beta can be found in these messages:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vimdev/message/23413
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vimdev/message/23598

If you are using ":hardcopy" on a non-MS-Windows system, get this patch:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vimdev/message/23606

Currently we are still working on three main issues. Hopefully these can be
finished soon, so that we can wrap up the beta testing:
- Make --remote-wait work for MS-Windows and related inter-Vim communication.
- Improve printing, mostly for PostScript.
- Font/fontset issues for Motif and Athena.
We could use a bit of help!


What is Vim?
------------

Vim is an almost 100% compatible version of the UNIX editor Vi. Many new
features have been added: Multi level undo, syntax highlighting, command line
history, filename completion, block operations, etc. Those who don't know Vi
can probably skip this message, unless you are prepared to learn something new
and useful. Vim is especially recommended for editing programs.

Vim runs on almost any Unix flavor, MS-DOS, MS-Windows 3.1, MS-Windows
95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP, OS/2, Atari MiNT, BeOS, VMS, RISC OS, Macintosh and
Amiga.

For more information, see http://vim.sf.net.


New 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 files 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

See this page for the details:

http://vim.sf.net/htmldoc/version6.html


Where to get it
---------------

Information about which files to download for what system:

http://vim.sf.net/download.php

If you already know what to get, download it from here:

ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/unreleased

Or use one of the mirrors, see:

ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/MIRRORS


Mailing lists
-------------

For user questions you can turn to the Vim mailing list. There are a lot of
tips, scripts and solutions. You can ask your Vim questions, but only if you
subscribe. See http://www.vim.org/mail.html. An archive is kept at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vim.

If you want to help developing Vim or get the latest patches, subscribe to the
vim-dev mailing list. An archive is kept at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vimdev.

Subject specific lists:
Multi-byte issues: vim-multibyte http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vim-multibyte
Macintosh issues: vim-mac http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vim-mac


Reporting bugs
--------------

Send them to <bugs@...>. Please describe the problem precisely. All the
time spent on answering mail is subtracted from the time that is spent on
improving Vim! Always give a reproducable example and try to find out which
settings or other things influence the appearance of the bug. Try starting
without your own vimrc file: "vim -u NONE -U NONE". Try different machines if
possible. See ":help bugs" in Vim. Send me patches if you can!

If something needs discussing with other developers, send a message to the
vim-dev mailing list. You need to subscribe first.


Happy Vimming!

--
"I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they
make as they go flying by."
-- Douglas Adams

/// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@... -- http://www.moolenaar.net \\\
((( Creator of Vim -- http://vim.sf.net -- ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim )))
\\\ Help me helping AIDS orphans in Uganda - http://iccf-holland.org ///