Learning the vi and Vim Editors, 7th Edition

Multiwindow Editing

vile is somewhat different from the other clones. It started life as a version of MicroEMACS, and then was modified into an editor with the “finger-feel” of vi.

One of the things that versions of Emacs have always done is handle multiple windows and multiple files; as such, vile was the first vi-like program to provide multiple windows and editing buffers.

As in elvis and Vim, the :split command^[60] creates a new window, and then you can use the ex command :efilename to edit a new file in the new window. After that, things become different; in particular, the vi command mode keys to switch among windows are very different.

Figure 18-1. Editing this chapter in vile

Figure 18-1 depicts a split screen that results from typing vile ch12.xml^[61] followed by :split and :e !zcat chapter.xml.gz.

Like Vim, all windows share the bottom line for execution of ex commands. Each window has its own status line, with the current window indicated by filling its status line with equals signs. The status line also acquires an I in the second column when in insert mode, and [modified] is appended after the filename when the file has been changed but not yet written out.

vile is also like Emacs in that commands are bound to key sequences. Table 18-1 presents the commands and their key sequences. In some cases, two sets of key sequences do the same operation, for example, the delete-other-windows ...