The audio recording of the Vim BOF session at the euroOSCON is now
available:

	 ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/stuff/20060919_BOF.wav
	 ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/stuff/20060919_BOF.mp3

The size of the .wav is 17 Mbyte.  It's a 8000 Hz mono recording.
The .mp3 file is about half that size and still sounds about the same.

The most notable subjects discussed:

0:00: Introduction by Bram: a bit of history, Vim 7 release, current situation
0:10: GUI Tab pages labels: more control over color/bold/etc/ of the text
0:13: file changed outside of Vim
0:23: undo tree view; search in text saved for undo
0:28: Perl integration: Vim functions in Perl directly
0:38: there are 3 match items only, need more
0:47: viper mode
0:48: seven habits of effective text editing
0:55: vertical folds
1:02: formatting text
1.10: the killer feature

Enjoy!

--
FIRST VILLAGER: We have found a witch.  May we burn her?
                  "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" PYTHON (MONTY) PICTURES LTD

  /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@... -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
///        sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\        download, build and distribute -- http://www.A-A-P.org        ///
  \\\            help me help AIDS victims -- http://ICCF-Holland.org    ///

Greetings, Vim users.

I am hosting a Vim BOF at the upcoming O'Reilly Open Source Convention:

       Title: Vim 8?
        Date: Tuesday, 19 September 2006
        Time: 20:30 - 21:30
    Location: Salon Versailles

     Summary: Vim 7 was released May 2006. Does it make sense to make
              another major release and add lots of new features? Or
              should priority be given to fix problems and fine tune
              existing features?

              What new features would users really profit from? Talk
              about the pros and cons with the main Vim author.

The conference is held in Brussels, 18 - 21 September.

More information: http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/euos2006/view/e_sess/9854

--
Linux is just like a wigwam: no Windows, no Gates and an Apache inside.

  /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@... -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
///        sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\        download, build and distribute -- http://www.A-A-P.org        ///
  \\\            help me help AIDS victims -- http://ICCF-Holland.org    ///

Greetings, Vim users.

You may have noticed patches for Vim 7 appear at a slow pace.  I
currently have limited time to work on Vim.  And my internet connection
isn't 100% reliable, and SourceForge was down for a day, and [insert
your favorite excuse here]...

On the positive side: I found a nice apartment in Zurich.  Once I have
moved in there and have a proper internet connection again I'll try to
work away the most important items in the todo list.  First the ones for
which I have received a patch (hint!).


While we are enjoying unusually sunny weather here in western Europe,
children in Uganda are suffering from an unusual drought.  Especially in
the area around Kibaale the situation is really bad.  Planted crops
withered and died.  It has not been this bad since 1992.

Kibaale Childrens Centre (KCC), the charity supported by Vim, has
started food assistance to over 400 families.  This has helped them
through the most difficult period.  However, we expect the families to
run out of food again after August, by the end of the dry season.  We
need to prepare to help the children and their families again.

For more background information read about the famine relief program:

	 http://iccf-holland.org/famine2006.html

Please consider making a donation this month!

- Bram

--
Tips for aliens in New York: Land anywhere.  Central Park, anywhere.
No one will care or indeed even notice.
		 -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

  /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@... -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
///        sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\        download, build and distribute -- http://www.A-A-P.org        ///
  \\\            help me help AIDS victims -- http://ICCF-Holland.org    ///

The Vim 7.0 binaries for OS/2 are now also available.  Thanks to David
Sanders for making these.

You can find the Vim 7.0 files here: ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/
Or see ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/MIRRORS for alternate servers.

os2/vim70rt.tgz              runtime files
os2/vim70os2.tgz             executable files, including EMX libraries

Install instructions can be found in the README_os2.txt file.

Happy Vimming!

--
Advice to worms:  Sleep late.

  /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@... -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
///        sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\        download, build and distribute -- http://www.A-A-P.org        ///
  \\\            help me help AIDS victims -- http://ICCF-Holland.org    ///

Announcing:  Vim (Vi IMproved) version 7.0


Vim 7 is ready!  After years of development this feature packed editor
is waiting for you.

Since Vim 6.4 many new features have been added.  To mention a few:

- Spell checking support for about 50 languages
- Intelligent completion for C, HTML, Ruby, Python, PHP, etc.
- Tab pages, each containing multiple windows
- Undo branches: never accidentally lose text again
- Vim script supports Lists and Dictionaries (similar to Python)
- Vim script profiling
- Improved Unicode support
- Highlighting of cursor line, cursor column and matching braces
- Translated manual pages support.
- Internal grep; works on all platforms, searches compressed files
- Browsing remote directories, zip and tar archives
- Printing multi-byte text

Once you have installed Vim 7.0 you can find details about the changes
since Vim 6.4 with ":help version7".


Credits
-------

A lot of people helped making Vim 7 possible by providing patches,
suggestions, bug reports and proofreading the documentation.  You can
find their names with ":help version7".  Many thanks to all of them!

Also thanks to Vim sponsors who supported me while working on Vim 7.  I
am now going back to a paid job.  Please continue sponsoring Vim.  The
money now goes to help children in Uganda.  The more you help them the
more I will feel obliged to work on Vim.  There is a drought right now,
we need to help 200 families with food.  http://www.vim.org/sponsor/


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

Information about which files to download for what system:
         http://www.vim.org/download.php

A list of mirror sites can be found here:
         http://www.vim.org/mirrors.php

Downloading through ftp from:
         ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/

Downloading through http from:
         http://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/

Using rsync:
         rsync://ftp.nl.vim.org/Vim

Using Subversion:
         http://www.vim.org/subversion.php

Anonymous CVS is five week behind and doesn't have Vim 7.0 yet.


An overview of the files:

UNIX:
unix/vim-7.0.tar.bz2           sources + runtime files, bzip2 compressed

VARIOUS:
extra/vim-7.0-extra.tar.gz     extra (non-Unix) files
extra/vim-7.0-lang.tar.gz      multi-language files
doc/vim70html.zip              help files converted to HTML

MS-WINDOWS:
pc/gvim70.exe                  self-installing, includes all runtime files
pc/vim70rt.zip                 runtime files
pc/vim70lang.zip               files for translated messages and menus
pc/gvim70.zip                  GUI binary for Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP
pc/gvim70ole.zip               GUI binary with OLE support
pc/gvim70_s.zip                GUI binary for Windows 3.1 (untested)
pc/vim70d16.zip                16 bit console version for MS-DOS
pc/vim70d32.zip                console version for MS-DOS/Windows 95/98
pc/vim70w32.zip                console version for Windows NT/2000/XP
pc/vim70src.zip                sources for PC (with CR-LF)

DIFFS TO PREVIOUS BETA
unstable/unix/vim-7.0g-7.0.diff.gz           sources + runtime files
unstable/extra/vim-7.0g-7.0-extra.diff.gz    extra files
unstable/extra/vim-7.0g-7.0-lang.diff.gz     multi-language files

SPELL FILES
ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/runtime/spell/
http://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/runtime/spell/

You should be able to do ":set spellang=xx" and Vim will offer you to
download spell files for "xx".



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/maillist.php#vim

If you want to help Vim development or get the latest patches, subscribe
to the vim-dev mailing list.  See http://www.vim.org/maillist.php#vim-dev

Subject specific lists:
Multi-byte issues: http://www.vim.org/maillist.php#vim-multibyte
Macintosh issues:  http://www.vim.org/maillist.php#vim-mac

Before you ask a question you should search the archives, someone may
already have given the answer.


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 reproducible 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".  Try
different machines if possible.  See ":help bugs" in Vim.  Send me a
patch 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!

--
Well, you come from nothing, you go back to nothing...  What have you
lost?  Nothing!
				 -- Monty Python: The life of Brian

  /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@... -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
///        sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\        download, build and distribute -- http://www.A-A-P.org        ///
  \\\            help me help AIDS victims -- http://ICCF-Holland.org    ///

Announcing:  Vim (Vi IMproved) version 7.0g BETA


This is the last BETA release of Vim 7 (hopefully).  The last few days
there have been too many changes to do a release.  This is the last
chance to report problems.  It would be very disappointing to discover a
problem just after sending out the final release!

Since the fifth BETA release there are mostly bug fixes.  Here is
a summary:
- For Motif and GTK tooltips were added to the tab page labels, so that
   you can see the full path.
- Help files with a non-utf-8 byte reported an illegal byte when
   'encoding' is "utf-8".
- Restricted what the expression for ":map <expr>" can do to avoid
   unpredictable problems.
- Prevent that CTRL-R = in Insert mode can start Visual mode.
- Typing a multi-byte character or a special key at the hit-enter prompt
   did not work (old problem).
- 'formatexpr' could not work properly without knowing what character is
   going to be inserted.  Added the v:char variable.
- With 8 colors Search highlighting could make text disappear.
- Allow "all" to appear together with other values in 'eventignore'.
- Win32: Dropping a shortcut on the Vim icon edited the shortcut instead
   of the file it refers to (old problem).
- In Insert mode the matchparen plugin highlighted the wrong paren when
   there is a string just next to a paren.

The coming days I will only fix serious problems, to avoid that changes
introduce new bugs.


Since Vim 6.4 many new features have been added.  To mention a few:

- Spell checking support for about 50 languages
- Intelligent completion: Omni completion
- Tab pages, each containing multiple windows
- Undo branches: never accidentally lose text again
- Vim script supports Lists and Dictionaries (similar to Python)
- Vim script profiling
- Improved Unicode support
- Highlighting of matching parens, cursor line and cursor column
- Translated manual pages support.
- Internal grep; works on all platforms, searches compressed files
- Browsing of remote directories, zip and tar archives
- Printing multi-byte text

Once you have installed Vim 7.0g BETA you can find details about the
changes since Vim 6.4 with ":help version7".  The changes since version
7.0f are at the end.


Testing
-------

This is a BETA test version.  Please give it a good test and report
anything that isn't right.  That includes a crash but also a typo in the
documentation.

I will not make an Amiga or OS/2 binary for Vim 7.  A Mac version should
be available soon on http://macvim.org/


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

Information about which files to download for what system:
         http://www.vim.org/download.php

All files can be found below this directory:
         ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/unstable/

A list of mirror sites can be found here:
         http://www.vim.org/mirrors.php

Vim 7.0g is also available (after a few hours) from Subversion, CVS and
with Aap:
	 http://www.vim.org/develop.php


An overview of the files:

UNIX:
unix/vim-7.0g.tar.bz2           sources + runtime files, bzip2 compressed

VARIOUS:
extra/vim-7.0g-extra.tar.gz     extra (non-Unix) files
extra/vim-7.0g-lang.tar.gz      multi-language files
doc/vim70ghtml.zip              help files converted to HTML

MS-WINDOWS:
pc/gvim70g.exe                  self-installing, includes all runtime files
pc/vim70grt.zip                 runtime files
pc/vim70glang.zip               files for translated messages and menus
pc/gvim70g.zip                  GUI binary for Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP
pc/gvim70gole.zip               GUI binary with OLE support
pc/gvim70g_s.zip                GUI binary for Windows 3.1 (untested)
pc/vim70gd16.zip                16 bit console version for MS-DOS
pc/vim70gd32.zip                console version for MS-DOS/Windows 95/98
pc/vim70gw32.zip                console version for Windows NT/2000/XP
pc/vim70gsrc.zip                sources for PC (with CR-LF)

DIFFS TO PREVIOUS BETA:
unix/vim-7.0f-7.0g.diff.gz     sources + runtime files
extra/vim-7.0f-7.0g-extra.diff.gz   extra files
extra/vim-7.0f-7.0g-lang.diff.gz    multi-language files


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/maillist.php#vim

If you want to help Vim development or get the latest patches, subscribe
to the vim-dev mailing list.  See http://www.vim.org/maillist.php#vim-dev

Subject specific lists:
Multi-byte issues: http://www.vim.org/maillist.php#vim-multibyte
Macintosh issues:  http://www.vim.org/maillist.php#vim-mac

Before you ask a question you should search the archives, someone may
already have given the answer.


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 reproducible 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".  Try
different machines if possible.  See ":help bugs" in Vim.  Send me a
patch 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!

--
(letter from Mark to Mike, about the film's probable certificate)
       For an 'A' we would have to: Lose as many shits as possible; Take Jesus
       Christ out, if possible; Loose "I fart in your general direction"; Lose
       "the oral sex"; Lose "oh, fuck off"; Lose "We make castanets out of your
       testicles"
                  "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" PYTHON (MONTY) PICTURES LTD

  /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@... -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
///        sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\        download, build and distribute -- http://www.A-A-P.org        ///
  \\\            help me help AIDS victims -- http://ICCF-Holland.org    ///

Announcing:  Vim (Vi IMproved) version 7.0f BETA


This is the fifth BETA release of Vim 7.  It is looking stable and
should be ready for daily use.  However, there are quite a few changes
compared to the previous BETA, thus more testing is required.

With a bit of luck this is the last BETA version before the Vim 7
release.  Please check everything.  It would be very disappointing to
discover a problem just after sending out the final release!

Since the fourth BETA release a few more things were improved, here is
a summary:
- Added the feedkeys() function: put keys in the typeahead queue.
- Many runtime files have been updated.
- The problems reported by coverity.com were all taken care of.
- Slicing a list allows indexes out of range.
- Added CTRL-W gF: open file name under cursor in new tab page.
- Mac: clipboard now works again when compiled without multi-byte
   feature.
- Mac: added 'macatsui' as a temporary work around for problems with
   displaying (multi-byte) text.
- A few more changes for Win64, should work properly now.
- Several crashes, hangs, bugs and problems were fixed.


Since Vim 6.4 many new features have been added.  To mention a few:

- Spell checking support for about 50 languages
- Intelligent completion: Omni completion
- Tab pages, each containing multiple windows
- Undo branches: never accidentally lose text again
- Vim script supports Lists and Dictionaries (similar to Python)
- Vim script profiling
- Improved Unicode support
- Highlighting of matching parens, cursor line and cursor column
- Translated manual pages support.
- Internal grep; works on all platforms, searches compressed files
- Browsing of remote directories, zip and tar archives
- Printing multi-byte text

Once you have installed Vim 7.0f BETA you can find details about the
changes since Vim 6.4 with ":help version7".  The changes since version
7.0e are at the end.


Testing
-------

This is a BETA test version.  Please give it a good test and report
anything that isn't right.  That includes a crash but also a typo in the
documentation.

I will not make an Amiga or OS/2 binary for Vim 7.  A Mac version should
be available soon on http://macvim.org/


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

Information about which files to download for what system:
         http://www.vim.org/download.php

All files can be found below this directory:
         ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/unstable/

A list of mirror sites can be found here:
         http://www.vim.org/mirrors.php

Vim 7.0f is also available from CVS and with Aap:
	 http://www.vim.org/develop.php


An overview of the files:

UNIX:
unix/vim-7.0f.tar.bz2           sources + runtime files, bzip2 compressed

VARIOUS:
extra/vim-7.0f-extra.tar.gz     extra (non-Unix) files
extra/vim-7.0f-lang.tar.gz      multi-language files
doc/vim70fhtml.zip              help files converted to HTML

MS-WINDOWS:
pc/gvim70f.exe                  self-installing, includes all runtime files
pc/vim70frt.zip                 runtime files
pc/vim70flang.zip               files for translated messages and menus
pc/gvim70f.zip                  GUI binary for Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP
pc/gvim70fole.zip               GUI binary with OLE support
pc/gvim70f_s.zip                GUI binary for Windows 3.1 (untested)
pc/vim70fd16.zip                16 bit console version for MS-DOS
pc/vim70fd32.zip                console version for MS-DOS/Windows 95/98
pc/vim70fw32.zip                console version for Windows NT/2000/XP
pc/vim70fsrc.zip                sources for PC (with CR-LF)

DIFFS TO PREVIOUS BETA:
unix/vim-7.0e-7.0f.diff.gz     sources + runtime files
extra/vim-7.0e-7.0f-extra.diff.gz   extra files
extra/vim-7.0e-7.0f-lang.diff.gz    multi-language files


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/maillist.php#vim

If you want to help Vim development or get the latest patches, subscribe
to the vim-dev mailing list.  See http://www.vim.org/maillist.php#vim-dev

Subject specific lists:
Multi-byte issues: http://www.vim.org/maillist.php#vim-multibyte
Macintosh issues:  http://www.vim.org/maillist.php#vim-mac

Before you ask a question you should search the archives, someone may
already have given the answer.


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 reproducible 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".  Try
different machines if possible.  See ":help bugs" in Vim.  Send me a
patch 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 have to exercise early in the morning before my brain
figures out what I'm doing.

  /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@... -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
///        sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\        download, build and distribute -- http://www.A-A-P.org        ///
  \\\            help me help AIDS victims -- http://ICCF-Holland.org    ///

Announcing:  Vim (Vi IMproved) version 7.0e BETA


This is the fourth BETA release of Vim 7.  It appears to be quite stable
and about ready for daily use, but I would like to do some more testing
to be sure.

We are getting closer to a release.  Please report every problem you
find!

Since the third BETA release a few more things were improved, here is
a summary:
- Added CTRL-W T: move a window to a new tab page.
- Fixed a crash on startup in the code that sets $MYVIMRC.
- The Win32 install program didn't use the "All Users" but the
   administrator directory.
- In spell files hide the || and ** around tags to make commands easier
   to read.
- Added "tabpages" to 'sessionoptions'.  A session can now also restore
   the tab pages.
- When completing menu names, e.g., after ":emenu", don't sort the
   entries but keep them in the original order.
- When a list is indexed with [a : b] and b was greater than the length
   an error message was given.  Now silently truncate the result.
- The extra files for XML Omni completion are now also installed.
- Added the 'M' flag to 'cinoptions'.
- Added gettabwinvar() and settabwinvar().
- For Hungarian the Myspell dictionary is now used again.  I gave up on
   using the Hunspell one, it has too many words.  Making this work would
   require too many changes to the code.
- A series of bug fixes, see the end of ":help version7".

Since Vim 6.4 many new features have been added.  To mention a few:

- Spell checking support for about 50 languages
- Intelligent completion: Omni completion
- Tab pages, each containing multiple windows
- Undo branches: never accidentally lose text again
- Vim script supports Lists and Dictionaries (similar to Python)
- Vim script profiling
- Improved Unicode support
- Highlighting of matching parens, cursor line and cursor column
- Translated manual pages support.
- Internal grep; works on all platforms, searches compressed files
- Browsing of remote directories, zip and tar archives
- Printing multi-byte text

Once you have installed Vim 7.0e BETA you can find details about the
changes since Vim 6.4 with ":help version7".  There are also a lot of
bug fixes.


Testing
-------

This is a BETA test version.  Please give it a good test and report
anything that isn't right.  That includes a crash but also a typo in the
documentation.

I will not make an Amiga or OS/2 binary for Vim 7.  A Mac version should
be available soon on http://macvim.org/


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

Information about which files to download for what system:
         http://www.vim.org/download.php

All files can be found below this directory:
         ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/unstable/

A list of mirror sites can be found here:
         http://www.vim.org/mirrors.php

Vim 7.0e is also available from CVS and with Aap:
	 http://www.vim.org/develop.php


An overview of the files:

UNIX:
unix/vim-7.0e.tar.bz2           sources + runtime files, bzip2 compressed

VARIOUS:
extra/vim-7.0e-extra.tar.gz     extra files
extra/vim-7.0e-lang.tar.gz      multi-language files
doc/vim70ehtml.zip              help files converted to HTML

MS-WINDOWS:
pc/gvim70e.exe                  self-installing, includes all runtime files
pc/vim70ert.zip                 runtime files
pc/vim70elang.zip               files for translated messages and menus
pc/gvim70e.zip                  GUI binary for Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP
pc/gvim70eole.zip               GUI binary with OLE support
pc/vim70ed16.zip                16 bit console version for MS-DOS
pc/vim70ed32.zip                console version for MS-DOS/Windows 95/98
pc/vim70ew32.zip                console version for Windows NT/2000/XP
pc/vim70esrc.zip                sources for PC (with CR-LF)

DIFFS TO PREVIOUS BETA:
unix/vim-7.0d-7.0e.diff.gz     sources + runtime files
extra/vim-7.0d-7.0e-extra.diff.gz   extra files
extra/vim-7.0d-7.0e-lang.diff.gz    multi-language files


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/maillist.php#vim

If you want to help Vim development or get the latest patches, subscribe
to the vim-dev mailing list.  See http://www.vim.org/maillist.php#vim-dev

Subject specific lists:
Multi-byte issues: http://www.vim.org/maillist.php#vim-multibyte
Macintosh issues:  http://www.vim.org/maillist.php#vim-mac

Before you ask a question you should search the archives, someone may
already have given the answer.


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 reproducible 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".  Try
different machines if possible.  See ":help bugs" in Vim.  Send me a
patch 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!

--
From "know your smileys":
  :-* A big kiss!

  /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@... -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
///        sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\        download, build and distribute -- http://www.A-A-P.org        ///
  \\\            help me help AIDS victims -- http://www.ICCF.nl         ///

This is a message for all people who maintain syntax files, plugins,
translations, etc.: Please send me updated files within a week. Thursday
20 April the latest.  Then I can make a final beta testing version for
Vim 7.

I don't search around on the internet for updated files, please e-mail
them to me.

This is also a last chance to make improvements.  All changes need to be
tested!

If you are not a maintainer but know there is a newer version available,
or know about a problem that needs to be fixed, please contact the
maintainer directly.  They might not all read this message.

--
Never go to the toilet in a paperless office.

  /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@... -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
///        sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\        download, build and distribute -- http://www.A-A-P.org        ///
  \\\            help me help AIDS victims -- http://www.ICCF.nl         ///

Announcing:  Vim (Vi IMproved) version 7.0d BETA


This is the third BETA release of Vim 7.  It appears to be quite stable
and about ready for daily use, but I would like to do some more testing
to be sure.


Since the second BETA release quite a few things were improved, here is
a summary:
- $MYVIMRC is set to to the first found .vimrc file and $MYGVIMRC to the
   first found .gvimrc file.  Added menu item "Startup Settings" that
   edits the $MYVIMRC file
- Added matcharg().
- The tab page labels are shortened, directory names are reduced to a
   single letter by default.  Added the pathshorten() function to allow a
   user to do the same.
- Added CTRL-W gf: open file name under the cursor in a new tab page.
- "New tab" item in the GUI tabline menu opens tab left of the click.
- Added "usetab" to 'switchbuf': jump to window in other tab page.
- Added tabpage-local variables t:var.
- 'cmdheight' now works local to a tab page.
- Motif: Added GUI tab pages line. (Yegappan Lakshmanan)
- Win32: The font used for the tab page labels was too big.  Use the
   system menu font. (George Reilly)
- Use of the Enter key for the popup menu works differently, hopefully
   better.
- Win32: Set the default for 'isprint' back to the wrong default
   "@,~-255", because many people use Windows-1252 while 'encoding' is
   "latin1".
- When init_spellfile() finds a writable directory in 'runtimepath' but
   it doesn't contain a "spell" directory, create one.
- A series of bug fixes, see the end of ":help version7".

Since Vim 6.4 many new features have been added.  To mention a few:

- Spell checking support for about 50 languages
- Intelligent completion: Omni completion
- Tab pages, each containing multiple windows
- Undo branches: never accidentally lose text again
- Vim script supports Lists and Dictionaries (similar to Python)
- Vim script profiling
- Improved Unicode support
- Highlighting of matching parens, cursor line and cursor column
- Translated manual pages support.
- Internal grep; works on all platforms, searches compressed files
- Browsing of remote directories, zip and tar archives
- Printing multi-byte text

Once you have installed Vim 7.0d BETA you can find details about the
changes since Vim 6.4 with ":help version7".  There are also a lot of
bug fixes.


Testing
-------

This is a BETA test version.  Please give it a good test and report
anything that isn't right.  That includes a crash but also a typo in the
documentation.

A known problem is that generating the Hungarian spell file doesn't
work.

I will not make an Amiga or OS/2 binary for Vim 7.  A Mac version should
be available soon on http://macvim.org/


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

Information about which files to download for what system:
         http://www.vim.org/download.php

All files can be found below this directory:
         ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/unstable/

A list of mirror sites can be found here:
         http://www.vim.org/mirrors.php

Vim 7.0d is also available from CVS and with Aap:
	 http://www.vim.org/develop.php


An overview of the files:

UNIX:
unix/vim-7.0d.tar.bz2           sources + runtime files, bzip2 compressed

VARIOUS:
extra/vim-7.0d-extra.tar.gz     extra files
extra/vim-7.0d-lang.tar.gz      multi-language files
doc/vim70dhtml.zip              help files converted to HTML

MS-WINDOWS:
pc/gvim70d.exe                  self-installing, includes all runtime files
pc/vim70drt.zip                 runtime files
pc/vim70dlang.zip               files for translated messages and menus
pc/gvim70d.zip                  GUI binary for Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP
pc/gvim70dole.zip               GUI binary with OLE support
pc/vim70dd16.zip                16 bit console version for MS-DOS
pc/vim70dd32.zip                console version for MS-DOS/Windows 95/98
pc/vim70dw32.zip                console version for Windows NT/2000/XP
pc/vim70dsrc.zip                sources for PC (with CR-LF)

DIFFS TO PREVIOUS BETA:
unix/vim-7.0c-7.0d.diff.gz     sources + runtime files
extra/vim-7.0c-7.0d-extra.diff.gz   extra files
extra/vim-7.0c-7.0d-lang.diff.gz    multi-language files


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/maillist.php#vim

If you want to help Vim development or get the latest patches, subscribe
to the vim-dev mailing list.  See http://www.vim.org/maillist.php#vim-dev

Subject specific lists:
Multi-byte issues: http://www.vim.org/maillist.php#vim-multibyte
Macintosh issues:  http://www.vim.org/maillist.php#vim-mac

Before you ask a question you should search the archives, someone may
already have given the answer.


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 reproducible 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".  Try
different machines if possible.  See ":help bugs" in Vim.  Send me a
patch 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!

--
Tips for aliens in New York: Land anywhere.  Central Park, anywhere.
No one will care or indeed even notice.
		 -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

  /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@... -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
///        sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\        download, build and distribute -- http://www.A-A-P.org        ///
  \\\            help me help AIDS victims -- http://www.ICCF.nl         ///

Announcing:  Vim (Vi IMproved) version 7.0c BETA


This is the second BETA release of Vim 7.

Since the first BETA release a few things changed:
- Win32 GUI implementation for the tab pages line added (by Yegappan
   Lakshmanan)
- The "autoload" directory was missing from the Win32 self-installing
   exe, causing errors during startup.
- Installing in C:\ caused the .bat files to be created in the wrong
   directory.
- The 16 bit DOS version is now included.
- A few bug fixes, see the end of ":help version7".


Since Vim 6.4 many new features have been added.  To mention a few:

- Spell checking support for about 50 languages
- Intelligent completion: Omni completion
- Tab pages, each containing multiple windows
- Undo branches: never accidentally lose text again
- Vim script supports Lists and Dictionaries (similar to Python)
- Vim script profiling
- Improved Unicode support
- Highlighting of matching parens, cursor line and cursor column
- Translated manual pages support.
- Internal grep; works on all platforms, searches compressed files
- Browsing of remote directories, zip and tar archives
- Printing multi-byte text

Once you have installed Vim 7.0c BETA you can find details about the
changes since Vim 6.4 with ":help version7".  There are also a lot of
bug fixes.

We can still change option names, function arguments, etc. at this
moment.  Please check the new features for consistency and ease of use.


Testing
-------

This is a BETA test version.  Because this is the very first release of
Vim 7 watch out for missing and misplaced files in the distribution.

I will not make an Amiga or OS/2 binary for Vim 7.  A Mac version should
be available soon on http://macvim.org/


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

Information about which files to download for what system:
         http://www.vim.org/download.php

All files can be found below this directory:
         ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/unstable/

A list of mirror sites can be found here:
         http://www.vim.org/mirrors.php

Vim 7.0c is also available from CVS and with Aap:
	 http://www.vim.org/develop.php


An overview of the files:

UNIX:
unix/vim-7.0c.tar.bz2           sources + runtime files, bzip2 compressed

VARIOUS:
extra/vim-7.0c-extra.tar.gz     extra files
extra/vim-7.0c-lang.tar.gz      multi-language files
doc/vim70chtml.zip              help files converted to HTML

MS-WINDOWS:
pc/gvim70c.exe                  self-installing, includes all runtime files
pc/vim70crt.zip                 runtime files
pc/vim70clang.zip               files for translated messages and menus
pc/gvim70c.zip                  GUI binary for Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP
pc/gvim70cole.zip               GUI binary with OLE support
pc/vim70cd16.zip                16 bit console version for MS-DOS
pc/vim70cd32.zip                console version for MS-DOS/Windows 95/98
pc/vim70cw32.zip                console version for Windows NT/2000/XP
pc/vim70csrc.zip                sources for PC (with CR-LF)


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/maillist.php#vim

If you want to help Vim development or get the latest patches, subscribe
to the vim-dev mailing list.  See http://www.vim.org/maillist.php#vim-dev

Subject specific lists:
Multi-byte issues: http://www.vim.org/maillist.php#vim-multibyte
Macintosh issues:  http://www.vim.org/maillist.php#vim-mac

Before you ask a question you should search the archives, someone may
already have given the answer.


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 reproducible 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".  Try
different machines if possible.  See ":help bugs" in Vim.  Send me a
patch 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!

--
LAUNCELOT: At last!   A call!  A cry of distress ...
            (he draws his sword, and turns to CONCORDE)
            Concorde!  Brave, Concorde ... you shall not have died in vain!
CONCORDE:  I'm not quite dead, sir ...
                  "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" PYTHON (MONTY) PICTURES LTD

  /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@... -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
///        sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\        download, build and distribute -- http://www.A-A-P.org        ///
  \\\            help me help AIDS victims -- http://www.ICCF.nl         ///

Well, bad luck this week.  First the server in Berlin, good old foobar,
suffered from a power surge.  It didn't come back until this afternoon.

Then the server in between that was keeping the messages queued until
foobar was coming back also suffered a power loss, had disk corruption
and apparently most queued messages got lost.

The mail appears to be flowing again.  If your message didn't get
through you might want to send it again.  Not only for the maillist,
all @vim.org addresses.

Work is under way to move the maillists to a more reliable server.  That
means there may be another interruption when this happens.

--
ONE KNIGHT:  (whispers) Sorry.
                  "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" PYTHON (MONTY) PICTURES LTD

  /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@... -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
///        sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\        download, build and distribute -- http://www.A-A-P.org        ///
  \\\            help me help AIDS victims -- http://www.ICCF.nl         ///

Announcing:  Vim (Vi IMproved) version 7.0b BETA


This is the first BETA release of Vim 7.  Since Vim 6.4 many new
features have been added.  To mention a few:

- Spell checking support for about 50 languages
- Intelligent completion: Omni completion
- Tab pages, each containing multiple windows
- Undo branches: never accidentally lose text again
- Vim script supports Lists and Dictionaries (similar to Python)
- Vim script profiling
- Improved Unicode support
- Highlighting of matching parens, cursor line and cursor column
- Translated manual pages for French, Italian and Russian
- Internal grep; works on all platforms, searches compressed files
- Browsing of remote directories, zip and tar archives
- Printing multi-byte text

Once you have installed Vim 7.0b BETA you can find details about the
changes since Vim 6.4 with ":help version7".  There are also a lot of
bug fixes.

We can still change option names, function arguments, etc. at this
moment.  Please check the new features for consistency and ease of use.


Testing
-------

This is a BETA test version.  Because this is the very first release of
Vim 7 watch out for missing and misplaced files in the distribution.

The 16 bit DOS version is missing, the data doesn't fit in 64 Kbyte.
I don't know if that can still be fixed.  I will not make an Amiga or
OS/2 binary for Vim 7.  A Mac version should be available soon.


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

Information about which files to download for what system:
         http://www.vim.org/download.php

All files can be found below this directory:
         ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/unstable/

A list of mirror sites can be found here:
         http://www.vim.org/mirrors.php

Vim 7.0b is also available from CVS and with Aap:
	 http://www.vim.org/develop.php


An overview of the files:

UNIX:
unix/vim-7.0b.tar.bz2           sources + runtime files, bzip2 compressed

VARIOUS:
extra/vim-7.0b-extra.tar.gz     extra files
extra/vim-7.0b-lang.tar.gz      multi-language files
doc/vim70bhtml.zip              help files converted to HTML

MS-WINDOWS:
pc/gvim70b.exe                  self-installing, includes all runtime files
pc/vim70brt.zip                 runtime files
pc/vim70blang.zip               files for translated messages and menus
pc/gvim70b.zip                  GUI binary for Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP
pc/gvim70bole.zip               GUI binary with OLE support
pc/vim70bd32.zip                console version for MS-DOS/Windows 95/98
pc/vim70bw32.zip                console version for Windows NT/2000/XP
pc/vim70bsrc.zip                sources for PC (with CR-LF)


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/maillist.php#vim

If you want to help Vim development or get the latest patches, subscribe
to the vim-dev mailing list.  See http://www.vim.org/maillist.php#vim-dev

Subject specific lists:
Multi-byte issues: http://www.vim.org/maillist.php#vim-multibyte
Macintosh issues:  http://www.vim.org/maillist.php#vim-dev

Before you ask a question you should search the archives, someone may
already have given the answer.


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 reproducible 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".  Try
different machines if possible.  See ":help bugs" in Vim.  Send me a
patch 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!

--
Two fish in a tank. One says to the other:
"Do you know how to drive this thing?"

  /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@... -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
///        sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\        download, build and distribute -- http://www.A-A-P.org        ///
  \\\            help me help AIDS victims -- http://www.ICCF.nl         ///

The past few years many people have sponsored my work on Vim.  Now
version 7 is nearing completion, beta testing will start soon, very
soon.  A big thanks to all who supported me!  I would not have been able
to do this without your help.

But things are going to change.  I have accepted a job offer and will go
back to a full time job in a few months.  To avoid speculation and
rumours: I am going to work for Google in Zurich.  Fortunately I can
spend part of my time on Vim.  But it will obviously be less than the
past few years when I was working 150% of my time on Vim.

I will no longer need sponsorship to survive.  Therefore, starting the
end of March, all money given for Vim sponsorship and registration will
go to the project in Kibaale, Uganda.  And no, this is not an April
fools joke.

The voting will continue as before.  And seeing people give money will
motivate me to keep working on Vim.  The children need the help much
more than me anyway.  Thus please keep sending money!

--
hundred-and-one symptoms of being an internet addict:
255. You work for a newspaper and your editor asks you to write an
      article about Internet addiction...in the "first person."

  /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@... -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
///        sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\        download, build and distribute -- http://www.A-A-P.org        ///
  \\\            help me help AIDS victims -- http://www.ICCF.nl         ///

This is about Vim's charity project, again.  We'll go back to Vim
announcements soon, I promise!


For Dutch people: The DVD about Kibaale Childrens Centre is now also
available with Dutch subtitles.  Go to the Dutch page to find it:
	 http://iccf-holland.org/themovien.html


I made the financial report for 2005.  More money has been donated than
ever before.  Thanks to all who sponsored and donated!  And we managed
to send 99.5 % of the money to project in Uganda.  You can read the
report here:
	 http://iccf-holland.org/jaar2005.pdf (English)
	 http://iccf-holland.org/jaar2005n.pdf (Dutch)


It is now also possible to send money with Moneybookers.  This should
have less overhead than using PayPal, and otherwise work in a similar
way.  The explanation is on this page:
	 http://iccf-holland.org/donate.html

Might as well include the text here:
	 You can use Moneybookers to send money with a Credit card or
	 from your bank account. The costs are lower than with PayPal.
	 Otherwise it is very similar to PayPal. You need to create an
	 account at Moneybookers and send the money to bram@....
	 Using Euro is preferred, your local currency is also accepted.

	 Security check: the URL must start with "https://www.moneybookers.com".

	 This is a new method, let me know if you encounter any problems
	 with Moneybookers.

--
DENNIS:  Listen -- strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no
          basis for a system of government.  Supreme executive power derives
          from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic
          ceremony.
                                   The Quest for the Holy Grail (Monty Python)

  /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@... -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
///        sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\        download, build and distribute -- http://www.A-A-P.org        ///
  \\\            help me help AIDS victims -- http://www.ICCF.nl         ///

This is about Vim's charity project, again.

The video I announced yesterday is now also available on Google Video.
This requires Flash 7.

You can the main video and the extras on the Google Video site:

	 http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=iccf


You can find more information and links to all the files here:

	 http://iccf-holland.org/themovie.html (English)
	 http://iccf-holland.org/themovien.html (Dutch)

I'm also looking into Bittorrent.  I won't be able to do this myself
though, help is welcome.

Bram Moolenaar

--
GALAHAD: No, please.  Please! I can defeat them!  There's only a hundred.
GIRLS:   He will beat us easily.  We haven't a chance.
                  "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" PYTHON (MONTY) PICTURES LTD

  /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@... -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
///        sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\        download, build and distribute -- http://www.A-A-P.org        ///
  \\\            help me help AIDS victims -- http://www.ICCF.nl         ///

This is about Vim's charity project.

November last year I made a video during my trip to Uganda.  I now
finished editing it.  You can download the result to get a unique view
of Kibaale, the project and what they are all doing there.

You can find more information and links to the files here:

	 http://iccf-holland.org/themovie.html (English)
	 http://iccf-holland.org/themovien.html (Dutch)

Note that some of the files are huge.  If you notice downloading is very
slow, please wait a few hours or days and try again.

If you want to setup a mirror, please contact me first.
Thanks to Juraj Lutter for providing the website!

Bram Moolenaar

--
Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code.

  /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@... -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
///        sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\        download, build and distribute -- http://www.A-A-P.org        ///
  \\\            help me help AIDS victims -- http://www.ICCF.nl         ///

No, this is not about the ":map" command.  It's about the Vim Frappr!
map.  This is where you can find out where Vim users are located in the
world.  For some of them you can even see the size of their house
(this depends on the resolution of the satellite image).

Looking at the "Most Members" list you can see that Vim is the 17th
group in the list now.  Not bad eh?  See the list here:
http://www.frappr.com/?a=browse&type=member

Wouldn't it be nice to make it into the top ten?  Add yourself!

The map is found here: http://www.frappr.com/vim

The Emacs list only has 12 members, that's not what I call
competition...

--
hundred-and-one symptoms of being an internet addict:
171. You invent another person and chat with yourself in empty chat rooms.

  /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@... -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
///        sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\        download, build and distribute -- http://www.A-A-P.org        ///
  \\\            help me help AIDS victims -- http://www.ICCF.nl         ///

This has become a tradition: The Vim desktop calendar for 2006 is now
available!  It is made from one sheet of paper that you need to fold.
It has a useful calendar on one side, brief information about ICCF
Holland, Vim, Aap and Zimbu Labs on the other side.

The Calendar is available in Dutch and English.  You can find the links
here:

	 http://www.moolenaar.net/index.html#Calendar

I think just about everybody can use PDF now, so I didn't make
PostScript files.  Let me know if you do need them.


Past, Present and Future

In 2005 we have seen the Vim 6.4 release and meanwhile work on new
features for Vim 7 continued.  The Vim 6 series is really into bugfixing
mode now, I spend most time working on Vim 7.  I see more remarks
appearing about the nice features it provides, and get problem reports
for Vim 6.x about things that have been fixed in Vim 7.  I suppose it's
about time to get Vim 7 ready for a release!

However, some of the new features are still unfinished and once the
release is out we need to be backwards compatible.  Thus I don't want to
rush things.  I will try to cut down on adding big new features now,
otherwise Vim 7 will never be ready.  It's difficult enough to get some
of the more complicated features (spell checking, omni completion) to a
quality level that people expect of a Vim release.

What happens after Vim 7 very much depends on the support I'm getting.
Fortunately there are quite a few sponsors, but it's still barely enough
to make a living.  Thus I might have to go back to work for money, which
means I won't have so much time for Vim.  We'll see what happens.

--
Why is "abbreviation" such a long word?

  /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@... -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
///        sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\        download, build and distribute -- http://www.A-A-P.org        ///
  \\\            help me help AIDS victims -- http://www.ICCF.nl         ///

After I returned from my trip to Uganda I had a big pile of mail waiting
for me, both paper and electronic.  I have now finished dealing with
this.  If you expected a reply from me but didn't get it, please send
your message again.  It might have been caught by the spam filter.


Now about my trip, visiting Vim's charity project in Uganda.  You can
find my visit report online here, with pictures:

	 http://iccf-holland.org/news.html (English)
	 http://iccf-holland.org/newsn.html (Dutch)

I'll include the English text below.

We are currently looking for donations and sponsors to help the children
that are finished at our school and want to continue at advanced level,
university or a professional training.  This costs much more, not only
for the school but also because the children need to rent a room in the
city and pay for their meals.  This part of their education is very
important, it turns them into skilled workers.  So please consider
helping them.

If you are going to do your Christmas shopping at Amazon, use the links
on this page: http://iccf-holland.org/click1.html
It doesn't cost you anything and will help the children in Kibaale.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Progress and complications

In the past years Uganda has seen an economic growth of about 5% per
year. This is very noticeable in the streets. You can see more vehicles
driving around, new shops, and better dressed people. Kibaale now has a
real petrol station! It is operated manually, since there is still no
electricity, but it works. Now we don't have to drive to Rakai to get
petrol and diesel.

The Kibaale Childrens Centre has grown a little bit. There is one new
block of classrooms and a big rainwater tank at the primary school is
almost finished. This will provide clean water for the children. Water
has always been a problem in this area; last year I reported the
borehole was fitted with a filter to improve the water quality. It still
works, but the amount of water is not enough for the 700 children at the
school.

Last year about a dozen of the children sponsored through ICCF Holland
finished secondary school and are now doing advanced level, business
school or another form of professional training. This means these
children have to move from their simple house in Kibaale to "the big
city" and find a place to live there. We need to pay for their housing,
food, education, books, etc. Obviously that is quite expensive; and
since they are far away from Kibaale and in many different places it's
difficult to keep track of these children.

The office at the project is currently struggling to manage this. Most
of the issues can be solved with money, but we need to make sure it is
used for the right purpose. There have been reports of a school where
money went missing and a student that faked a letter. We need to verify
the requests, which takes time and effort. I hope this won't result in
some of the honest children being slowed down in their studies.

I interviewed Namate Rose. She first studied in our school in Kibaale,
continued at advanced level in Masaka and has now finished university in
Jinja. She is confident that she did well and her exam results will be
positive. That will make her a qualified secondary school teacher. It is
very good to see one poor orphan that we helped become an educated
person; I hope many will follow.


Ssese Islands

One of the children I wanted to visit is in an agricultural school on
Ssese islands. Friends of Dave and Ruth Frith sponsor a couple of
children there, and so we planned to combine work with pleasure: visit
the children and have a day off at the nice islands. Well, it didn't
work out as planned...

We managed to get to the ferry landing site quite early, and noticed it
was coming in. But instead of letting us aboard they brought in welding
equipment and started to fix the ferry. At first they said it would take
a couple of hours, but it turned out to be five! In the meantime a lot
of vehicles arrived that all wanted to go to Ssese islands. When they
finally started boarding it became a race to be the first on the ferry.
This involved a lot of brutal driving, resulting in scratches and broken
lights. We didn't want to risk damaging the vehicle and failed to get on
board. Oh well, maybe next year.

But the day wasn't finished yet. On our way back to Kibaale we found a
huge python. Someone apparently killed it and left it stretched on the
road (see the pictures page ). There was no way around it, I had to
drive over it. After taking a couple of pictures we continued driving
back to Kibaale and had two flat tires! Makes you wonder whether it was
caused by driving over the snake. To make matters worse the vehicle had
no spanner. Friendly Ugandans stopped to help us, even though it was
already dark.

Fortunately there was a second chance to make a trip. We went to lake
Mburo national park for a weekend. I'm glad I could see some of the
beautiful nature that Uganda has. Lake Mburo is the smallest park and
the only one that has zebras. I enjoyed driving around and seeing many
wild animals, including impala, buffalo, hippo and topi. No flat tires
this time!


Internet

Last year I failed to setup e-mail at the project, but I did learn from
the experience, and this time I came prepared. I brought several phones,
a special antenna and a bag with cables. Last year I found that with
this antenna it is possible to get a good signal for a mobile phone. I
had heard that the phone provider MTN had started to support GPRS, but I
was not sure if it would work in Kibaale, so that was the first thing to
try out. I visited an MTN service desk in Kampala before going down to
Kibaale, and they entered settings in the Nokia 6310 that I brought. The
first day in Kibaale I managed to make this phone work to connect my
computer to the internet. Great!

The cost is reasonable, 5 shillings per Kbyte. A big advantage is that a
slow or failed connection will not make sending data more expensive. The
disadvantage is that browsing the internet quickly costs a few thousand
shillings (1500 shillings is a US dollar). Thus I had to find a way to
do e-mail efficiently, avoiding webmail. This kept me busy for a few
weeks, because several attempts failed. I finally figured out that MTN
has a firewall that blocks many ports. Fortunately my friend Cor in
Kampala could setup a simple POP/SMTP account for me on standard ports
and that worked. Hopefully it keeps on working the coming year.

This still isn't ideal, a flat-rate connection would be preferred.
Therefore I also tried another system, called CDMA, but could not detect
any signal in Kibaale. The progress in Uganda continues, hopefully a
more cost effective solution will become available soon.


More...

At the project many of the usual activities continue. Arleen had
restarted her work to improve the quality of teaching. She does teacher
training and curriculum development. Trying the improve the quality of
education is something that will never stop. The clinic was busy as
always. I joined the nurses on a immunization trip. It continued until
late, and we had to drive back in the dark.

We worked hard to get the children make a Christmas card for their
sponsor. It's quite a challenge to help them write a good letter. Each
year I ask them to write in a way that the sponsor gets useful
information. I was in the S1 classroom for this, and now know how hard
it is to explain to these children in remote Kibaale how to write
something that a person in Holland would like to read. The cultural
difference is huge. They often end up writing a "thank you" note,
instead of relating important things that happened in their family.

Photos and text are quite limited in what they can show about what goes
on at the project. I brought a video camera, interviewed several people,
and filmed the children in the classrooms, on the playground and in
their homes. The coming months I will edit the four hours of video into
to a short documentary. People with sufficient bandwidth will be able to
download it.


Plans

The coming year the center will concentrate on quality improvement. That
means we do not start new activities but do better at what we are
currently doing. A problem is that this isn't popular with people making
donations, as we will not be able to show a new building; but we do need
to invest in better guidance for the older students, repair some of the
buildings, continue teacher training, get more books for the library,
etc. We are helping 700 children, and we will do our best to help them
grow and become responsible adults.


Bram Moolenaar

--
hundred-and-one symptoms of being an internet addict:
244. You use more than 20 passwords.

  /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@... -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
///        sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\        download, build and distribute -- http://www.A-A-P.org        ///
  \\\            help me help AIDS victims -- http://www.ICCF.nl         ///

The Vim 6.4 binaries for OS/2 are now also available.  Thanks to David
Sanders for making these.

You can find the Vim 6.4 files here: ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/

os2/vim64rt.tgz              runtime files (always needed)
os2/vim64os2.tgz             executable files, including EMX libraries

Install instructions can be found in the README_os2.txt file.

Happy Vimming!

--
Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

  /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@... -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
///        Sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\              Project leader for A-A-P -- http://www.A-A-P.org        ///
  \\\     Buy LOTR 3 and help AIDS victims -- http://ICCF.nl/lotr.html   ///

Announcing:  Vim (Vi IMproved) version 6.4
     Author:  Bram Moolenaar et al.


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

This is a bugfix release of Vim.  Since Vim 6.3 dozens of reported
problems have been fixed.  Also included are new and updated syntax
files, translated menus and messages.

There are no new features.  This release is only fixing bugs.

A Beta version revealed a few problems, mostly in the creation of the
generated files.  This has been fixed and tested again.  I am confident
that the 6.4 release is the most stable Vim ever!

Once you have installed 6.4 you can find details about the changes since
Vim 6.3 with ":help version-6.4".  There is a long list of fixed bugs.


What is next?
-------------

Vim 7!  If I keep getting donations from sponsors and registered Vim
users I will be able to add several "big" features.  One of the new
features is spell checking, it already works quite well.  The list of
votes is an indication of other items that might get added in Vim 7:
         http://www.vim.org/sponsor/vote_results.php


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

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://www.vim.org.  This is also a great
place to find Vim tips and scripts!


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

Information about which files to download for what system, obtaining Vim
through Aap, CVS, etc.:

         http://www.vim.org/download.php

All files can be found below this directory:

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

A list of mirror sites can be found here:

         http://www.vim.org/mirrors.php

An overview of the files:

UNIX:
unix/vim-6.4.tar.bz2           sources + runtime files, bzip2 compressed
         The same in parts that fit on a floppy:
   unix/vim-6.4-rt1.tar.gz        runtime files part 1
   unix/vim-6.4-rt2.tar.gz        runtime files part 2
   unix/vim-6.4-src1.tar.gz       sources part 1
   unix/vim-6.4-src2.tar.gz       sources part 2
unix/vim-6.3-6.4.diff.gz       diff between 6.3 and 6.4

VARIOUS:
extra/vim-6.4-extra.tar.gz     extra files
extra/vim-6.4-lang.tar.gz      multi-language files
extra/vim-6.3-6.4-extra.diff.gz    diff for extra files
extra/vim-6.3-6.4-lang.diff.gz     diff for multi-language files
doc/vim64html.zip              help files converted to HTML

DIFFS between 6.4b and 6.4:
unstable/unix/vim-6.4b-6.4.diff.gz          sources and runtime files
unstable/extra/vim-6.4b-6.4-extra.diff.gz   extra files
unstable/extra/vim-6.4b-6.4-lang.diff.gz    multi-language files

MS-WINDOWS:
pc/gvim64.exe                  self-installing, includes all runtime files,
                                    gvim.exe, vim.exe, etc.
pc/vim64rt.zip                 runtime files (use with one of the binaries)
pc/vim64lang.zip               files for translated messages and menus
pc/gvim64.zip                  GUI binary for Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP
pc/gvim64ole.zip               GUI binary with OLE support
pc/gvim64_s.zip                GUI binary for Windows 3.x with Win32s
pc/vim64d16.zip                16 bits real mode - works on any system
pc/vim64d32.zip                32 bits protected mode - needs 386 and DPMI
pc/vim64w32.zip                console version for Windows NT/2000/XP
pc/vim64src.zip                sources for PC (with CR-LF)

AMIGA:
amiga/vim64rt.tgz              runtime files (always needed)
amiga/vim64bin.tgz             executable files
amiga/vim64src.tgz             sources packed for Amiga


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.  First search the archive, it is full of useful
hints.

If you want to help Vim development or get the latest patches, subscribe
to the vim-dev mailing list.

Subject specific lists:
Multi-byte issues: vim-multibyte
Macintosh issues:  vim-mac

More info on the maillists and links to the archives:
         http://www.vim.org/maillist.php


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 reproducible 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".  Try
different machines if possible.  See ":help bugs" in Vim.  Send me a
patch if you can!

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


Sponsoring
----------

Fixing bugs and adding new features takes an awful lot of time.  Through
your donations Bram will be able to have a part-time job and spend more
time on Vim.  See:
         http://www.vim.org/sponsor/


Happy Vimming!

--
The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through
three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and
Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases.
For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question 'How can
we eat?' the second by the question 'Why do we eat?' and the third by
the question 'Where shall we have lunch?'
		 -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

  /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@... -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
///        Sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\              Project leader for A-A-P -- http://www.A-A-P.org        ///
  \\\     Buy LOTR 3 and help AIDS victims -- http://ICCF.nl/lotr.html   ///

Because of the annoying problem with dependencies in src/Makefile, I
made a Vim 6.4b release for Unix only.  For other systems there are no
changes (except a few less important changes in the help files).

This makes it simpler for people on Unix systems to try out the new 6.4
BETA without the need to apply a patch.  This should also give the
autoconf code to work around the gcc -MM problem some testing.

You can find Vim 6.4b here:
	 ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/unstable/unix/

--
While it's true that many normal people whould prefer not to _date_ an
engineer, most normal people harbor an intense desire to _mate_ with them,
thus producing engineerlike children who will have high-paying jobs long
before losing their virginity.
				 (Scott Adams - The Dilbert principle)

  /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@... -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
///        Sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\              Project leader for A-A-P -- http://www.A-A-P.org        ///
  \\\     Buy LOTR 3 and help AIDS victims -- http://ICCF.nl/lotr.html   ///

For people building Vim on Unix: You should use the path available here:

	 ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/unstable/patches/6.4a/6.4a.001

Sorry about this.

I routinely did "make depend" without checking the results.  It appears
a newer gcc interprets the "-MM" argument in a different way, messing up
the generated dependencies.  #@#$!*&!  This won't be easy to work around
either (please throw some rotten food in the direction of the gcc
maintainers! :-).

Now you know why BETA tests are required...

--
The only way the average employee can speak to an executive is by taking a
second job as a golf caddie.
				 (Scott Adams - The Dilbert principle)

  /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@... -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
///        Sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\              Project leader for A-A-P -- http://www.A-A-P.org        ///
  \\\     Buy LOTR 3 and help AIDS victims -- http://ICCF.nl/lotr.html   ///

Announcing:  Vim (Vi IMproved) version 6.4a BETA
     Author:  Bram Moolenaar et al.


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

This is a bugfix BETA release of Vim.  Since Vim 6.3 dozens of reported
problems have been fixed.  Also included are new and updated syntax
files, translated menus and messages.

There are no new features.  This release is only fixing bugs.

Once you have installed 6.4a BETA you can find details about the changes
since Vim 6.3 with ":help version-6.4".  There is a long list of fixed
bugs.


Testing
-------

This is a BETA test version.  Most of the changes were already released
as patches and have been used by many people for a while.  I don't
expect problems, thus feel free to install this for real work.

Do watch out for any mistakes with the distribution.  I haven't made a
release for quite a while.  The "big" Win32 executable now uses Python
2.4 instead of 2.3.  For Perl and Ruby a minor update was done to Perl
5.8.7 and Ruby 1.8.3.

Please report anything that doesn't look right.  Vim 6.4 should be the
most reliable Vim ever!  If everything goes well I'll release Vim 6.4 in
less than a week.


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://www.vim.org.  This is also a great
place to find Vim tips and scripts!


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

Information about which files to download for what system:

         http://www.vim.org/download.php

All files can be found below this directory:

         ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/unstable/

A list of mirror sites can be found here:

         http://www.vim.org/mirrors.php

An overview of the files:

UNIX:
unix/vim-6.4a.tar.bz2           sources + runtime files, bzip2 compressed
   unix/vim-6.4a-rt1.tar.gz        runtime files part 1
   unix/vim-6.4a-rt2.tar.gz        runtime files part 2
   unix/vim-6.4a-src1.tar.gz       sources part 1
   unix/vim-6.4a-src2.tar.gz       sources part 2
unix/vim-6.3-6.4a.diff.gz       diff between 6.3 and 6.4a

VARIOUS:
extra/vim-6.4a-extra.tar.gz         extra files
extra/vim-6.4a-lang.tar.gz          multi-language files
extra/vim-6.3-6.4a-extra.diff.gz    diff for extra files
extra/vim-6.3-6.4a-lang.diff.gz     diff for multi-language files
doc/vim64ahtml.zip                  help files converted to HTML

MS-WINDOWS:
pc/gvim64a.exe                  self-installing, includes all runtime files
pc/vim64art.zip                 runtime files
pc/vim64alang.zip               files for translated messages and menus
pc/gvim64a.zip                  GUI binary for Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP
pc/gvim64aole.zip               GUI binary with OLE support
pc/vim64ad16.zip                16 bits real mode - works on any system
pc/vim64ad32.zip                32 bits protected mode - needs 386 and DPMI
pc/vim64aw32.zip                console version for Windows NT/2000/XP
pc/vim64asrc.zip                sources for PC (with CR-LF)

AMIGA:
amiga/vim64art.tgz              runtime files (always needed)
amiga/vim64abin.tgz             executable files
amiga/vim64asrc.tgz             sources packed for Amiga
                                 (no binary yet, sorry)


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/maillist.php.  An archive
is kept at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vim.

If you want to help Vim development 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 reproducible 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".  Try
different machines if possible.  See ":help bugs" in Vim.  Send me a
patch 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!

--
An easy way to determine if you have enough teamwork to be doomed is simply to
measure how long it takes from the time you decide to go to lunch together
until the time you actually eat.
				 (Scott Adams - The Dilbert principle)

  /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@... -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
///        Sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\              Project leader for A-A-P -- http://www.A-A-P.org        ///
  \\\     Buy LOTR 3 and help AIDS victims -- http://ICCF.nl/lotr.html   ///

It looks like Vim 7 is still far from a release.  There are quite a few
things to be worked on.  And I'm going to Uganda for about a month, that
pushes it further forward.

Vim 6.3 was released over a year ago.  There are patches, but many
people prefer installing Vim directly, with all the updated runtime
files.  Therefore I'm planning a 6.4 release.  This is just going to be
Vim 6.3 with all the patches included and the most recent runtime files.

If there is some bug that was fixed in Vim 7 but not put back into Vim
6.3, let me know and I'll see if the risk is small enough to do that
now.  Stability is the main goal of this release, thus I will reject
anything that I am not confident about.

The most recent runtime files can be found here:
	 ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/runtime/
If you spot an outdated file there, please ask the maintainer to send me
an update.

Don't send requests for new features, I will ignore them.

It has been a long time since I made a release, I'm first going to make
Vim 6.4a beta.  Mostly to verify the release building is OK.

Schedule:
Right now, until October 7: Maintainers send me updated runtime files
     Weekend of October 8/9: Vim 6.4a beta
     Less than a week later: Vim 6.4

--
MICHAEL PALIN PLAYED: 1ST SOLDIER WITH A KEEN INTEREST IN BIRDS, DENNIS, MR
                       DUCK (A VILLAGE CARPENTER WHO IS ALMOST KEENER THAN
                       ANYONE ELSE TO BURN WITCHES), THREE-HEADED KNIGHT, SIR
                       GALAHAD, KING OF SWAMP CASTLE, BROTHER MAYNARD'S ROOMATE
                  "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" PYTHON (MONTY) PICTURES LTD

  /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@... -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
///        Sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\              Project leader for A-A-P -- http://www.A-A-P.org        ///
  \\\     Buy LOTR 3 and help AIDS victims -- http://ICCF.nl/lotr.html   ///

This message is about Vim's charity, not about Vim itself.  If you are
not interested, please just skip it.  Flame me if you want...

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

In October I am going to visit the Kibaale Children's Centre in Uganda.
Communication with the project has always been difficult, because they
are in a remote area.  Last year I managed to setup a GSM antenna so
that they could be called.

I have now heard that the phone broke down.  I don't know why or if they
can get it fixed.  But at least I want to bring another phone on my
trip, either as a replacement or as a backup.  I also want to setup
e-mail, because this is the most convenient method and has much lower
cost.

For this purpose I'm looking for a second hand phone.  Hopefully someone
has one laying around because he got a new one.  The phone may be
scratched and look ugly, so long as it works properly.

I can't use just any phone, because it needs to be connected to a GSM
antenna and to a computer.  The cables for this are hard to get and/or
expensive.

The preferred models are Nokia 5110/6110/7110/6210/6310.  These all use
the same cables and have an antenna connector on the back (usually
covered by a round rubber plug).  For these I can easily get cables that
I know will work (I used a Nokia 7110 last year).  Thus I can use these
even if you don't have the cables.

For other models I would need a complete set:
- Phone with internal modem
- Antenna cable (adapter) which fits an FME plug.  Note that signal
   strength matters, thus it should be a good cable, not an inductive
   coupled one.
- PC cable to USB, with software that supports using the phone as a modem.

If you are in Europe you can send it directly to me:

	 Bram Moolenaar
	 Clematisstraat 30
	 5925 BE  Venlo
	 The Netherlands

When outside of Europe we need to be aware of taxes.  If you can clearly
mark the package as something up to $20 it should be OK.  If it goes
over that I have to pay taxes (also over the transport costs), this may
make it unattractive.

I'm packing my bags October 15, thus it should be here before then.
Sooner is better, so that I can try it out before leaving.  In case of
any doubt, please ask me before sending anything.

Here you can read the report of my trip last year, with a picture of the
GSM antenna I setup then: http://iccf-holland.org/news.html

--
hundred-and-one symptoms of being an internet addict:
244. You use more than 20 passwords.

  /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@... -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
///        Sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\              Project leader for A-A-P -- http://www.A-A-P.org        ///
  \\\     Buy LOTR 3 and help AIDS victims -- http://ICCF.nl/lotr.html   ///

The Vim website has been quite slow lately.  This was mostly caused by
the MySQL server being heavily loaded.

I have now setup caching for the index page.  This information doesn't
change that often, thus doing a database query every time isn't really
needed.  The page is now updated every ten minutes.

Hopefully the only thing you notice is the fast loading.  If you spot
another problem, let me know.

--
If Microsoft would build a car...
... You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off.

  /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@... -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
///        Sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\              Project leader for A-A-P -- http://www.A-A-P.org        ///
  \\\     Buy LOTR 3 and help AIDS victims -- http://ICCF.nl/lotr.html   ///

Many Vim users support the Kibaale Children's Centre in Uganda, where
AIDS victims are being helped.  Most of the money is handled by the ICCF
Holland foundation.  The financial report for 2004 is now available here:

	 http://iccf-holland.org/jaar2004.pdf

And in Dutch:

	 http://iccf-holland.org/jaar2004n.pdf

The total amount sent to the project in Uganda is about the same as the
previous two years.  Although it's nice to be stable, I was hoping for a
bit more.  The project keeps growing!

The challenge for 2005 will be to support the children that finished
secondary school and now want continue at advanced level, university, or
learn a profession.  It is important to give them help with their final
phase in education.  But, as parents of teenagers know, it's also the
most expensive phase.

--
hundred-and-one symptoms of being an internet addict:
193. You ask your girlfriend to drive home so you can sit back with
      your PDA and download the information to your laptop

  /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@... -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
///        Sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\              Project leader for A-A-P -- http://www.A-A-P.org        ///
  \\\     Buy LOTR 3 and help AIDS victims -- http://ICCF.nl/lotr.html   ///

This has become a tradition: I have made the Vim calendar for 2005
available on my website (scroll all the way down):

	 http://www.moolenaar.net

This is a desktop calendar, folded from one sheet of paper.  On one side
it has all the days nicely aligned, on the other side is brief info
about ICCF Holland (Vim's charity), Vim, A-A-P (a project I did last
year) and Zimbu Labs (my little company).

It's available in English and Dutch as PDF and compressed PostScript.
The English version both in A4 and Letter size.

I wish you all a nice holiday season and happy Vimming in 2005!

--
hundred-and-one symptoms of being an internet addict:
97. Your mother tells you to remember something, and you look for
     a File/Save command.

  /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@... -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
///        Sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\              Project leader for A-A-P -- http://www.A-A-P.org        ///
  \\\     Buy LOTR 3 and help AIDS victims -- http://ICCF.nl/lotr.html   ///