Subject: Vim version 6.0ai ALPHA available
From: Bram Moolenaar <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 03 Jun 2001 21:32:14 +0200

The user manual is progressing well.  Up to chapter 23 now.

Again, the installation program for MS-Windows
has been changed, but not tested.  Be careful with it.

Major changes
-------------

Win32: When editing a file that is a shortcut (*.lnk file), edit the file it
links to.  Unless 'binary' is set, then edit the shortcut file itself.
(Yasuhiro Matsumoto)

Added chapters 5 to 23 in the user manual.

Other changes
-------------

Internal: Renamed mch_windexit() to mch_exit(), mch_init() to mch_early_init()
and mch_shellinit() to mch_init().

The character obtained with getchar() no longer goes through Normal mode
mappings.  When using "\<Del>" now use the special key code instead of 0x7f.
Otherwise 'getchar == "\<Del>"' doesn't work.

Added ":filetype detect".  Try detecting the filetype again.  Helps when
writing a new shell script, after adding "#!/bin/csh".

Win32: Call dyn_libintl_init() and dyn_libintl_end() in different places, so
that it also works for the console version.

Did some more integration of the VMS and the Unix code.  Removed os_vms.h.
(Zoltan Arpadffy)

Added 'L' and 'R' flags in 'guioptions': Add a left or right scrollbar only
when there is a vertically split window.

Added inputdialog() support for Win32. (Thore B. Karlsen)

Added more features and fixed a few problems in dosinst.c. (Jon Merz)

Fixes
-----

Using a filename in Big5 encoding for autocommands didn't work (backslash in
trailbyte).  (Yasuhiro Matsumoto)

If the Normal colors were set before starting termcap mode, the colors would
not be restored when exiting Vim.
When using a color scheme in a color terminal, exiting without saving a file
would not restore the colors of the terminal.

Reading a file from stdin didn't work.  stdin was closed before reading the
text.  Now close it after reading the text.

'virtualedit': (Chase Tingley)
- With blockwise Visual selection, "O" didn't move to the other corner when
  both corners are in virtual space.
- In Visual-block mode highlighting part of a tab was wrong.

":hardcopy" in the GUI didn't use the printer dialog. (Vince Negri)

When using ":filetype off", ftplugin and indent usage would be switched off at
the same time.  Don't do this, setting 'filetype' manually can still use them.

GUI: When writing a double-byte character, it could be split up in two calls
to gui_write(), which doesn't work.  Now flush before the output buffer
becomes full. 

When 'laststatus' is set and 'cmdheight' is two or bigger, the intro message
would be written over the status line.
The ":intro" command didn't work when there wasn't enough room.

The colors for ":hardcopy" were wrong when using a color terminal.

When using ":saveas file" while the current buffer had no file name, and
'cpoptions' includes 'F', the file name would be messed up.

Configuring for Ruby failed with a recent version of Ruby. (Akinori Musha)

When 'ignorecase' is set, matching multi-byte characters did not always work
correctly.  Was comparing byte-by-byte.

Athena: When deleting the directory in which Vim was started, using the file
browser made Vim exit.  Removed the use of XtAppError().

Win32: When loading the Make_gvc.mak makefile into DevStudio and converting it
to a project, linking would not work.  Added libraries. (Walter Briscoe)

When setting 'rightleft' in a diff window a filler line was not displayed
correctly.

GUI: The Horizontal scrollbar was not updated when the cursor moved to another
line.

":g/pat/p" with lines that only contain multi-byte characters didn't insert
line breaks.

When using autoconf 2.50, UNIX was not defined.  Moved the comment for "#undef
UNIX" to a separate line.

After CTRL-W x the frame sizes were wrong.  Dragging the status line or
vertical separator no longer worked.
When using CTRL-W L to move a window to the far right, the frame layout could
be messed up.  Resulted in very strange behavior when dragging a vertical
separator.

The code for PostScript used floating point, this caused linking to fail on
the Amiga.

vim:set sts=4 tw=78 fo+=t:

Epilogue
--------

WARNING: This is really an unstable version.  Many things have been added
without proper testing.  It does crash.  It may destroy your work.  New
features may change incompatibly in the next version.

This version is for developers, thus it comes as source code only.
If you run into something that doesn't work, please try to figure out why,
try to solve it and send me a patch.  If you can't do that, at least send me
precise information to save me time.

More info about the new 6.0 features with ":help version6".

If you don't like the syntax of a command, the name of an option or how the
new features work, let's discuss this in the vim-dev maillist.

Lots of things are not working yet.  Check ":help todo" for known items.

I NEED YOUR HELP: There is still a lot of work to be done.  If I have to do it
all by myself it will take a very long time until Vim.6.0 is ready.  Please
give a hand by implementing one of the items in the todo list.

You can find Vim 6.0 here: ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/unreleased/

unix/vim-6.0ai-rt.tar.gz	runtime files
unix/vim-6.0ai-rt.tar.bz2	same, compressed with bzip2
unix/vim-6.0ai-src.tar.gz	sources
unix/vim-6.0ai-src.tar.bz2	same, compressed with bzip2

extra/vim-6.0ai-extra.tar.gz	extra files
extra/vim-6.0ai-lang.tar.gz	multi-language files

Happy Vimming!