Learning the vi and Vim Editors, 7th Edition

General Introduction to gvim

gvim brings all the functionality, power, and features of Vim while adding the convenience and intuitive nature of a GUI environment. From traditional menus to visual highlighting editing, gvim provides the GUI experience today’s users expect. For veteran, console-based, text-environment vi users, gvim still gives the familiar core power and doesn’t dumb down the paradigm that garnered vi its reputation as a power editor.

Starting gvim

When Vim is compiled with GUI support, you can invoke it by issuing a gvim command or a Vim command with an added -g option. On Windows, the self-installing executable adds one interesting feature that many discover only accidentally after installation: a new Windows Explorer menu item labeled “Edit with Vim.” This provides quick and easy access to gvim by integrating it into the Windows environment. It is worth trying on files you maybe wouldn’t have considered before, especially unusual files such as binaries. However, it is potentially dangerous to edit binary files, and we caution you to use extreme care when editing these files.

The configuration files and options recognized by gvim are slightly different from those used by Vim. gvim reads and executes two startup files: .vimrc, followed by .gvimrc. Although you can put gvim-specific options and definitions in .vimrc, it’s better to define them in .gvimrc. This provides a nice separation of regular Vim and gvim customization. It also assures proper behavior on startup. ...