ViEmu Blog

The new ViEmu 2.5, for all of VS, SQL Server and Word&Outlook, is ready for download:

http://www.symnum.com/latest.html

(Symnum Systems is the new incorporated name of the old NGEDIT Software, be ready for a full phase-out of the old name everywhere.)

Before anything else: this version doesn’t support VS2010 yet, but we’re working on it, and I hope to have a beta available in 3-4 weeks. Watch out here for news, or follow me on Twitter. I know we’re somewhat late with this, moving from native C++ and COM to managed C++/CLI and .NET has been quite a challenge. The good news is that the new integration will allow awesome new functionality in future versions of ViEmu and Codekana. ViEmu/VS2010 will be free for those who bought ViEmu/VS less than a year before it, and it will carry a small support-period-extension fee for those who bought before that.

The main new features are multiple-key-chord mappings and Ctrl-A/Ctrl-X.

Multiple-key-chord mappings allow mapping a sequence of keys:

  :nmap c_ ct_

And when you type c_, ViEmu will process ct_. Of course, the most difficult  part is that when you type just ‘c’ ViEmu has to wait and see if what comes next is an underscore, or something else, and decide what to do. That is, ambiguity arises. And to be fully compatible with vim, this wait has to timeout configurably, etc… which ViEmu does.

I am not that much  of a user of these mappings, but some people have serious power configured in their .vimrc’s using this functionality, and they will now be able to bring it to ViEmu.

Ctrl-A/Ctrl-X on the other hand are in principle very simple commands: they increment/decrement the number where the cursor is. Actually, the implementation is a nightmare, as they work with decimal, octal, hexadecimal and on single alphabetic characters, and there are a lot of complex rules controlling how they work. I thought this would be simpler than the multiple-key-chord mappings feature, and it turned out to require much, much more work. In any case, there it is for you to enjoy in this new version. Let me know if some edge case is not handled correctly.

I’m doing a pre-release before the official release, because this release incorporates the new license-key system, and I want to roll things out slowly to test everything. The link above has all the information on how to obtain the new-style license key. If there is any problem, just get in touch with me via email or using any of the support forms.