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version8.txt For Vim version 8.0. Last change: 2016 Apr 12 VIM REFERENCE MANUAL by Bram Moolenaar NOTE: THIS FILE IS STILL BEING WORKED ON vim8 vim-8 version-8.0 version8.0 Welcome to Vim 8! A large number of bugs have been fixed and several features have been added. This file mentions all the new items and changes to existing features since Vim 7.4. Bug fixes, the patches for Vim 7.4, can be found below vim-7.4. Use this command to see the version you are using: :version See vi_diff.txt for an overview of differences between Vi and Vim 7.0. See version4.txt for differences between Vim 3.x and Vim 4.x. See version5.txt for differences between Vim 4.x and Vim 5.x. See version6.txt for differences between Vim 5.x and Vim 6.x. See version7.txt for differences between Vim 6.x and Vim 7.x. INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES incompatible-8 NEW FEATURES new-8 Vim script enhancements new-vim-script-8 IMPROVEMENTS improvements-8 COMPILE TIME CHANGES compile-changes-8 PATCHES patches-8 ============================================================================== INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES incompatible-8 These changes are incompatible with previous releases. Check this list if you run into a problem when upgrading from Vim 7.4 to 8.0. The support for MS-DOS has been removed. Minor incompatibilities: For filetype detection: ... ============================================================================== NEW FEATURES new-8 First a list to the bigger new features. A comprehensive list is below. Asynchronous I/O support, channels Vim can now exchange messages with another process in the background. The message are received and handled while Vim is waiting for a character. See channel-demo for an example, communicating with a Python server. Closely related to channels is JSON support. JSON is widely supported and can easily be used for inter-process communication, allowing for writing a server in any language. The functions to use are json_encode() and json_decode(). Jobs Vim can now start a job, communicate with it and stop it. This is very useful to run a process for completion, syntax checking, etc. Channels are used to communicate with the job. Jobs can also read from or write to a buffer or a file. See job_start(). Timers Also asynchronous are timers. They can fire once or repeatedly and invoke a function to do any work. For example: let tempTimer = timer_start(4000, 'CheckTemp') This will make call 4 seconds later, like: call CheckTemp() Partials Vim already had a Funcref, a reference to a function. A partial also refers to a function, and additionally binds arguments and/or a dictionary. This is especially useful for callbacks on channels and timers. E.g., for the timer example above, to pass an argument to the function: let tempTimer = timer_start(4000, function('CheckTemp', ['out'])) This will make call 4 seconds later, like: call CheckTemp('out') Packages Plugins keep growing and more of them are available then ever before. To keep the collection of plugins manageable package support has been added. This is a convenient way to get one or more plugins, drop them in a directory and possibly keep them updated. Vim will load them automatically, or only when desired. See packages. New style tests This is for Vim developers. So far writing tests for Vim has not been easy. Vim 8 adds assert functions and a framework to run tests. This makes it a lot simpler to write tests and keep them updated. These functions have been added: assert_equal() assert_notequal() assert_exception() assert_fails() assert_false() assert_match() assert_notmatch() assert_true() alloc_fail() disable_char_avail_for_testing() Window IDs Previously windows could only be accessed by their number. And every time a window would open, close or move that number changes. Each window now has a unique ID, so that they are easy to find. Wrapping lines with indent The 'breakindent' option has been added to be able to wrap lines without changing the amount of indent. Windows: Direct-X support This adds the 'renderoptions' option to allow for switching on Direct-X (DirectWrite) support on MS-Windows. GTK+ 3 support GTK+ 2 is getting old, GTK+ 3 is here. Support has been added and it already works quite well, mostly just like GTK+ 2. Vim script enhancements new-vim-script-8 ----------------------- In Vim scripts the following types have been added: Special v:false, v:true, v:none and v:null Channel connection to another process for asynchronous I/O Job process control Many functions and commands have been added to support the new types. Various new items new-items-8 ----------------- Normal mode commands: Insert mode commands: Options: Ex commands: Ex command modifiers: Ex command arguments: New and extended functions: New Vim variables: v:vim_did_enter Set when VimEnter autocommands are triggered New autocommand events: New highlight groups: New items in search patterns: New Syntax/Indent/FTplugin files: New Keymaps: New message translations: Others: ============================================================================== IMPROVEMENTS improvements-8 The existing blowfish encryption turned out to be much weaker than it was supposed to be. The blowfish2 method has been added to fix that. Note that this still isn't a state-of-the-art encryption, but good enough for most usage. See 'cryptmethod'. ============================================================================== COMPILE TIME CHANGES compile-changes-8 Dropped the support for MS-DOS. It was too big to fit in memory. ============================================================================== PATCHES patches-8 bug-fixes-8 The list of patches that got included since 7.4.0. This includes all the new features, but does not include runtime file changes (syntax, indent, help, etc.) TODO: INCLUDE PATCH LIST. vim:tw=78:ts=8:ft=help:norl:
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