Vile – Vi Like Emacs

invisible-island.net

4 pointswryun2 comments

Posted because when I originally started using vi clones I didn't look at Vile (why do I want a 'vi like emacs'? Do I really want a 'vile' editor?), but eventually realised:

- it has all the features I want

- it's a lot faster than vim or vis (smooth behaviour with syntax highlighting even on an original RPI)

- it's still maintained (unlike elvis)

I've been stubbornly using vile since perhaps 1998.

It's one of the first things I install onto the new unix-ey things I use.

This all started because back then at least, screen update speeds seemed faster than vim, and it did multi-windows in a way that made sense to me.

To this day I have a .vilerc with only two custom keybindings... one to split a window and one to go to the next window.

Mainly because of this HN post, after all these years I finally looked into how to write vile macros and have been mostly pleased with the capabilities.

Many thanks to the MicroEmacs creator for the foundations, and to Paul Fox and Thomas Dickey for keeping it alive all these years.

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