Background

The simple goal of this project is to create configuration files for Vim that make it as easy to use as a good single-mode text editor or IDE. You might call Cream a usability project for Vim.

Many people appreciate a powerful text editor after they have used one. Unfortunately, Microsoft Window's Notepad is about the only text editor most are familiar with and it hardly classifies as a real text editor. Once you've tried an editor with syntax highlighting, show invisibles, autoindent, auto-wrapping, column selection, multiple document interface and macros, you'll find it hard to work with anything less. If you somehow made it to this site, chances are you're not the average user in the first place.

One of the chief differences between Cream and typical Vim may perhaps be the editing tasks and style performed with them. As has been hypothesised:

Experienced emacs and vi users, who use their editors to write and edit English text, performed a series of basic editing tasks and wrote a movie or book review. Our findings suggest that moded editing, as exemplified by the vi editor, may be preferable for fixed editing tasks, while modeless editing, as exemplified by the emacs editor, may have some advantages for free composing.

Source: Softpanorama Western Orthodox Editors Page

This is why holy wars erupt every time the subject of text editors comes up. We think about our text editing tasks differently, so it is only natural that our tools and methods will differ to that end. Unfortunately, the debate usually rages over the tools, rather than the specific goals these tools are designed to accomplish.

Personal

My experience with computers is on Apple and Windows operating systems since a childhood friend's father across the street brought home the first IBM PC. I'm used to Alt/Apple+Menu Name accelerators, Ctrl+Arrow Keys for moving around, the classic Ctrl+X/C/V for Cut, Copy and Paste, and Ctrl+A to select everything. And I don't need all sorts of editing modes to get things done when just one (or seemingly one) leaves me more brain cycles to concentrate on the editing at hand. This is reflective of my typical editing tasks, usually writing free style or editing HTML. So I am generally as interested in the verbal content as I am the code format. This perhaps explains my efforts to change Vim into a more content-based editor, per the commentary above.

I just started tampering with GNU/Linux and Vim in August 1999, but it was only Christmas 2001 when I realized it might be possible to convert Vim into the single mode text editor I needed. I am not a programmer. Well, I'm a bit of a web jockey, but no serious programmer would call me a programmer. I've done HTML/CSS, JavaScript, Vim scripting, some PHP and MySQL, a bit of AutoLisp, and an embarrasing amount of Visual Basic connected to Microsoft Word and AutoCAD. But my formal education is actually Architecture. This means that I like design, human interface and making things work consistently with how they look. (Hence my irritation with Unix text editors at the moment.) My architectural background is also responsible for extensive CAD experience, which further bolsters my position that mouse-GUI input is faster for most users with anything of significant complexity.

Still the greatest text editor I've ever used is UltraEdit. Unfortunately, it is proprietary, binary-only, and Windows-only. It once was ported for Unix, and was reported to be just a short while away from being there again, but after two years of buying updates, I gave up hope that it will ever make an appearance. It might still be worth the initial price, but at this point I would have invested quite a bit in this software without owning the right to any future improvements or bug fixes. And although I greatly respect UltraEdit and admire the viewpoints of it's author, I believe that society's need to work together to make computer technology available to the masses is a deciding argument for me against the proprietary software model in common applications. So Cream is licensed under the GNU General Public License.

I'm currently working on further developing these thoughts here to include my faith and how my beliefs correspond to licensing, text editing, and why some crazed fool would even take on a project like Cream. I think in some weird way it's all related. Isn't it true that a number of famous text editor authors have religious or religious-like affinity for their tools? I will argue that the attraction lies in belief, and that the striving to create foundational tools like text editors stems from the same strong beliefs in universal truths. This ferver parallels the preacher's, and I believe they are fundamentally related. Keep tuned as we develop the story in future releases!

Steve Hall  [ digitect@mindspring.com ]