Subject: Vim version 6.0 RELEASE is available
From: Bram Moolenaar <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2001 22:47:50 +0200

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

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

This is a major new version of Vim.  Vim 6.0 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

The alpha and beta testing has taken more than a year.  Many problems
have been fixed in the previous weeks, which is also a hint that more
problems will be found in the future.  Thus the usual disclaimers apply.
Otherwise, Vim 6.0 has been tested quite a bit, thus it's ready for
daily work.

One problem has already been noticed and fixed: Using the "sh" syntax
may cause error messages.  Get patch 6.0.001 to fix that.  Or get the
new sh.vim syntax file.  You can find the most recent patches here:

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

Upgrading from Vim 5.x to Vim 6.0 should be easy.  Vim 6.0 is mostly
backwards compatible.  But this is a major new release, the new features
may cause a few problems.  If something goes wrong, first check out
":help version6" for known incompatibilities.

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.
This is also a great place to find Vim tips and scripts!

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 file 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/

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 <[email-masked]>.  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 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!