
Vim 8.1 is available - Anthony-G
https://www.vim.org/vim-8.1-released.php
======
jolmg
> The main new feature of Vim 8.1 is support for running a terminal in a Vim
> window.

Well, my first reaction to reading this is that vim doesn't need this. What's
wrong with opening another terminal Xorg window (like xterm)? If you're not
using Xorg because you're in the linux console or through a ssh connection,
what's wrong with terminal multiplexers (like tmux)? If Vim was already
started when you realized you wanted a shell, what's wrong with Ctrl-Z to get
to the parent process shell or :shell to open a shell subprocess?

Vim is a text editor, but now it seems it's a terminal multiplexer, too.

Something I really like about vim is that it stuck closer to the unix
philosophy of doing one thing well and being highly compatible with the rest
of the OS environment for more features through the universal interface of
text. This makes it seem like it's trying to move closer to emacs's way of
doing things by having stuff integrated and being a complete development
environment instead of letting the whole orchestra of the OS components be the
environment.

~~~
justinmk
> Something I really like about vim is that it stuck closer to the unix
> philosophy of doing one thing well

You mean _relative to Emacs_. Because otherwise that belief makes no sense.
It's an urban legend that was used as an excuse for Vim's limitations, it has
no basis in reality. Zero.

Nor does the "do one thing" slogan match Bram's own goals for the project.
Again, it was a rumor passed along and repeated without verification, just
like the rumor that Vim supported DOS, OS/2, etc., even though no one had
checked whether that was actually true.

Vim has its own blowfish implementation, an internal spellchecker, an 11k LOC
plugin called netrw which doesn't follow Vim's own interface conventions. Vim
also now has the "LogiPat" plugin which adds yet another way to build regular
expressions, hiding Vim's own regex flavor. Vim has builtin NetBeans
integration, Sun workshop integration.

> and being highly compatible with the rest of the OS environment for more
> features through the universal interface of text.

You mean because it pipes stdio streams?

~~~
jolmg
> You mean because it pipes stdio streams?

Yes, I was referring to :[range]!, :[range]w !, and :[range]r !.

And yes, I guess I meant relative to Emacs. I see it as the main design
dichotomy between them.

However, while vim does have built-in features that go against this ideal,
they are extraneous features, not a core part of vim. I guess my post was a
rant against adding yet another one of those kinds of features that lead it to
be used in a way that departs from the unix philosophy even more.

------
nemanjaboric
Where can I find this "terminal debugger plugin"? Btw, terminal can be opened
using `:terminal`, in case you're wondering (the release notes should really
show how to use the new features).

~~~
nemanjaboric
Nevermind. If you check `vim-use` mailing group release email, you can see
that there's `help version8.1` command which discusses the new release in more
details.

------
0x54MUR41
Same discussion can be found here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17102133](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17102133)

------
Zardoz84
Oh... nvim had this along time ago.

