Sunday, April 26, 2015

pyvim, an experimental pure Python vim clone

By Vasudev Ram




Saw this via Twitter:

pyvim, a pure Python vim clone, by Jonathan Slenders from Belgium.

It's new and experimental, so will not have a lot of features, and may have some bugs.

I tried it out briefly after installing it with:
pip install pyvim
(That's all there is to it. It's location even got added to my PATH.)

Here is a screenshot of me editing a file in pyvim:


And here is a screenshot of running pyvim without specifying a filename, i.e. editing a new file (same image as the one at the top of this post, except that the one at the top links to the pyvim site on Github):


The really interesting thing about the editor being written in Python, is that, as they say, it may later be possible to script the editor in Python:

"Further, when the project develops, it should also become possible to write extensions in Python, and use Python as a scripting language. (Instead of vimscript, for instance.)"

Speaking of vim, if you are new to vim or vi (vim's predecessor), you may like to check out my vi quickstart tutorial, first published in Linux For You magazine. I first wrote the tutorial at the request of some Windows sysadmin friends who were transitioning to Linux, and they told me that it helped them to come up to speed with vi quickly, for basic text editing tasks. I then sent it to Linux For You as an article proposal and they published it.

- Vasudev Ram - Online Python training and programming

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Quote: Further, when the project develops, it should also become possible to write extensions in Python, and use Python as a scripting language. (Instead of vimscript, for instance.)

Which one can do in Vim already to at least some extent. I am not sure if there is something missing, but extending python support in Vim could bear better results.

Vasudev Ram said...

>Which one can do in Vim already to at least some extent.

Yes, I was aware of that.

>I am not sure if there is something missing, but extending python support in Vim could bear better results.

If you're not sure of those details, then how can you assume that it will give better results?

Vasudev Ram said...

>extending python support in Vim could bear better results.

And anyway, the point is not that what you say might give better results - it very well might.

The point is that choice is good, and also that pyvim is an interesting experiment. If no one wrote any new software because something like it already existed, the world would be poorer for that, and less fun.