Talk:Elvis (text editor)
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[edit] "Influenced vim development"
Okay, so "cross-pollinate" was the wrong term to use in my edit summary, but I couldn't, and still can't think of a good term to use. That aside, I really have to take issue with such a terse statement. Yes, Vim has been influenced by features that appeared in Elvis, but not what I'd call drastically. "Influenced vim development" is just too vague and--at least to me--implies more of an influence than there actually was. Vim has taken ideas from everywhere, including Emacs, CRiSP, SlickEdit, and so on. But some of the ideas that went into Vim were simply good ideas that happened to already exist in other editors. That is to say, they didn't get implemented because another editor had them.
Yes, of all the influences Vim has had, Elvis is (or was?--it doesn't look like it's currently being developed) perhaps the most significant, so I don't object to a statement like this one being made, but only if it's much more clearly stated. Am I wrong in thinking Vim also influenced Elvis in some things? I know Bram Moolenaar directly discussed feature ideas with the developer(s) of Elvis in the past.
Also, the link that got restored is still a dead link. I only got to see the content of that page by using Google's cache.
-- Heptite (T) (C) (@) 05:33, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
- I noticed the dead link, but am in the middle of more urgent work (will repair this morning). Vim indeed has "taken ideas from everywhere", systematically, and - read its changelog - very rarely gives credit in the final product (the list of credits in the help-file doesn't reflect the extent or nature of the borrowing). It's only in the wishlists that one can see the borrowing of ideas. Some in fact were borrowed explicitly because competing editors had them, not merely because they were Good Ideas. This of course is long ago - it was around 1997 or so when vim started producing original ideas. However, it's rather unlikely that I'll ever be discussing this topic with user of vim who (other than Bram) is knowledgeable about the topic. Tedickey (talk) 10:18, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
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- Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I feel like there's at least a small measure of hostility here. Let me make it clear that I have nothing against Elvis—I like Elivs, even though I haven't used it for a while now—but I do think this article needs work, and this was one thing that really jumped out at me. The way it's phrased right now is just plain not clear. It should also probably be in the main article with a footnote type link instead of in the external links section.
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- Specifically addressing some of your comments, I said that some of the ideas that went into Vim [...], not all or even most. As for giving credit, I see quite a lot of projects take ideas from other projects with little or no credit. I don't think it's fair, but it happens; if you have specific examples regarding Vim, I think it would be reasonable to actually ask Bram to give credit where it's due. Bram is actually pretty good about giving credit to individuals who contribute, even minor things like bug reports.
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- As for my being knowledgeable about this topic, it is certainly true that I don't know the full story, but I have definitely been following Vim development fairly closely for quite some time (at least since Vim 5 development, which would mean about 1996-1997).
