Can someone point me to a good Vi (or Vim) app for windows?

Question

Hi all,

I've been inspired by yehuda katz ( http://yehudakatz.com/2010/07/29/everyone-who-tried-to-convince-me-to-use-vim-was-wrong/ ) to start using Vi (or vim) as opposed to my current tool of choice, Notepad++.

I had a look on the vim.org site but couldn't find any recent windows vim app, am i looking in the wrong place or something? Or is there truly not a modern vim windows app?

Can people recommend something along the lines of MacVIM for Windows?

Thanks

Answer 1

Care to try gvim?

From the download page:

For Vim 6 and later. This includes a GUI version of Vim - with many features and OLE support - and all the runtime files. It works well on MS-Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP. Use this if you have enough disk space and memory. It's the simplest way to start using Vim on the PC. The installer allows you to skip the parts you don't want.

Answer 2

It's listed under "MS-DOS and Windows", but gvim72.exe is what you're looking for. That's the latest and greatest, official, graphical Vim.

Answer 3

Here is the link to the download:

ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/pc/gvim72.exe

It includes both the command line and GUI version for Win32.

Here are some settings for your vimrc file that make it a little more civilized for programming tasks:

set tabstop=4
set shiftwidth=4
set softtabstop=4
set expandtab
set number
set nowrap
set nobackup
set nohlsearch
"set gfn=Bitstream\ Vera\ Sans\ Mono\ 12
"colorscheme asc
syntax on

I commented out my font and custom color scheme. Salt to taste....

Answer 4

Cream is VIM modded to be more user friendly. It might be a good starting point. If not, they have a good Windows download that is raw VIM too.