On Wednesday, 9 August 2017 22:57:26 UTC+2, Bram Moolenaar wrote: > Mikhail wrote: > > > Are there existing ideas, prototypes or forks of VIM > > with interactive GUI? > > I believe a decend GUI engine can boost > > the editing productivity by means of advanced > > interactive features. > > With a GUI I don't mean of course menus/buttons, but > > the design of the interaction and visual feedback, e.g. > > navigation, scrolling, more mouse features. > > > > Also I am very interested in realistic fonts, which could > > quickly improve the reading experience. > > Not sure why you call this "renderer". It seems it's more about > interactive elements.
The code which composes and draws everything in the window I called a renderer. Probably it is not very exact term. Having a proportional font is the most wanted feature for me. I am totally satisfied with other features in VIM but they all could be pixel-precise and much easier to implement if we'd move from the tile-based GUI to the fully graphical mode. There exist decent libraries to do all related things, I'd probably use the SDL library or similar analog. I understand the dilemma here, e.g. if I'll get nice proportional font, but as a result, much slower editor response and startup time, I would not be happy, still I will choose proportional font for long work, since it is much better reading experience. Here is an anecdote from my practice: for almost everything code-like I use VIM, but for the rest simple edits I use Notepad, and I realise that the _only_ reason I do so is the pleasure of a readable proportional font. So one of the key aspects for my judgement of an IDE or a code editor would be undoubtfully the text rendering and fonts. > > > Currently I consider VIM a perfect editor and > > it would be hard to name something that is > > limiting it. > > But the GUI is, well, not enabling the above mentioned > > luxuries :) > > > > So how realistic is the scenario where VIM becomes > > these "features"? > > I understand intuitively that these "features" are the core of > > the application in this case. So it is more precise to > > ask whether the developers will consider prototype > > proposals adressing these features? > > Vim has always been used in a terminal just as often as in the GUI. We > prefer functionality to be available in both. Doesn't need to look > exactly the same, that would be impossible, but it must be possible to > use mappings, plugins, etc. both in the GUI and the terminal the same > way. This does add restrictions to what's possible in the GUI. I know too little about how VIM is designed internally :( Theoretically, I suppose it is feasable to substitute the graphical part without breaking (too much) the compatibility. Still most logic that are bound to the tile-based nature of current GUI must be retooled completely. Mikhail -- -- You received this message from the "vim_use" maillist. Do not top-post! Type your reply below the text you are replying to. For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "vim_use" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
