Vim 8.2 Released : Vim Online
upstart writes in with a submission, via IRC, for AndyTheAbsurd.
After more than a year of development the new features are now ready for the Vim crowds. Popup windows make it possible to show messages, function prototypes, code snippets and anything else on top of the text being edited. They open and close quickly and can be highlighted in many ways. More about that in the article.
Vim 8.2 is available!Vim 8.2 is a minor release, a lot of bugs have beenfixed, documentation was updated, test coverage was improved, etc.There are a few interesting new features, see below.
For MS-Windows, download the self installing executable.
Signed MS-Windows files will soon be available on thevim-win32-installer site
For Unix you probably want to get the latest version using git, see thegithub page
Otherwise see the Download page for options.Background:
Before I did the keynote at VimConf 2018 I asked plugin developers what theywanted from Vim. The result was a very long list of requested features.The top two items were clear: Popup windows and text properties.
After more than a year of development the new features are now ready for theVim crowds. Popup windows make it possible to show messages, functionprototypes, code snippets and anything else on top of the text being edited.They open and close quickly and can be highlighted in many ways. More aboutthat below.
This was no small effort. Although the existing window support could be used,popup windows are different enough to require a lot of extra logic. Especiallyto update the screen efficiently. Also to make it easy for plugin writers touse them; you don't need to tell Vim exactly where to show one, just give areference point and the text to display, Vim will figure out the size and wherethe popup fits best.
Text properties can be used for something as simple as highlighting a textsnippet or something as complicated as using an external parser to locatesyntax items and highlight them asynchronously. This can be used instead ofthe pattern based syntax highlighting. A text property sticks with the text,also when inserting a word before it. And this is done efficiently by storingthe properties with the text.
There's much more at the above link.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.