ViEmu Blog

The new ViEmu 2.5 has been available for a while, but I still haven’t emailed all existing customers about it. I wanted to make sure the new customer area was properly tested, that there was usable ViEmu/VS2010 beta, and that the license-key system transition would be as smooth as possible.

Fixing one last minor-but-annoying problem, I have uploaded the new 2.5.4 version of all the ViEmus to the main site. The main fix is that it didn’t properly recognize licenses that had had extra spaces tacked on to the end some or all lines. This seems to happen often with some email clients and gateways out there, so the issue was coming up repeatedly. The new release fixes this minor niggle. So, apart from this, this version is functionally equivalent to the previous one, no real need to reinstall if you have 2.5.3 working fine. There is also a Codekana 1.5.4 release with the same change.

We have also prepared ViEmu/VS2010 Beta 3, with this last fix in license-key recognition, and also adding the functionality to recognize Ctrl-[ as Escape, which several users have requested. Given the new input processing mechanism in ViEmu/VS2010, we had to reimplement this. Here is the link to install the new beta:

http://www.viemu.com/ViEmuVS2010-Beta3.vsix

Once you install it (no need to uninstall previous betas first), you may have to use the “ViEmu->Set Keybindings” to assign the correct command to the Ctrl-[ keybinding. If you want to do it manually to avoid other keybinding changes, you can go to Tools|Options|ViEmu and assign the command “ViEmu.ViEmuCtrl[” to keypress Ctrl-[. Let us know how it works for you.

Finally, I have also added a links to the customer area to the navigation bar at the top, and an article explaining the new licensing system and the reanoning behind it: http://www.viemu.com/new-licensing-system.html.

If all goes well, I will email every customer tomorrow with an announcement of the new available releases, and hopefully it won’t be a support nightmare!

Once the rubber hits the road things start coming up. So we rolled our sleeves up and started fixing the most glaring issues. Here is a new build of ViEmu/VS2010:

http://www.viemu.com/ViEmuVS2010-Beta2.vsix

No need to uninstall Beta 1 before installing this one.

Addressed issues:

• Fixed “Out of Memory” Exception in the Solution Explorer Window. It was due to showing the Welcome dialog too early in the VS/WPF start-up process.
• _viemurc loading could crash and leave ViEmu unloaded
• Rare, seemingly-random caret-related exceptions in the background (although they could come to the foreground at times)
• Removed “read-only” attribute from VS files/buffers (not in the file system), required for ex commands and sometimes normal mode keys to work
• Corrected a few typos in informational messages

We will keep looking into the other issues and prepare new releases. We hope that ViEmu/VS2010 will be “good” in a few weeks, and really “great” in a few months.

Keep the feedback coming!

So, finally, here it is. It’s a bit rough on the edges but it should be usable:

http://www.viemu.com/ViEmuVS2010-Beta1.vsix

Download it, double-click on the file, and you should be good to go. It will show up in the next session of Visual Studio. It will offer to reassign keybindings to ViEmu, if you want to restore them afterwards, you will need to use VS’s “Reset Settings

Known issues:

• No hlsearch (yet)
• No folding/wordwrap support
• Coexistence with Visual Assist is so-so
• No Settings dialog available
• Documentation isn’t updated
• Ambiguous multiple-key mapping processing doesn’t automatically time out

These other features will be implemented in a few weeks (our estimation of how long it will take). There are no known actual show-stoppers, if there are any, let us know and we will try to fix it ASAP to allow you to use it.

They used to say that the good thing of moving from VHS to DVDs allowed you to buy all your movie collection all over again. The good thing about re-implementing ViEmu in the new VS architecture, using managed code and .NET instead of native code and COM is that we get to re-implement all features again and re-fix all problems with other 3rd party editions.

This beta uses the new license-key system, you can go to http://www.symnum.com/customer-area and use the password-recovery mechanism to get your new-style license key (use the email address you used for your purchase ). The beta will work all licenses bought during the last year, and it will work in trial mode for 30 days in all other cases. If you buy ViEmu/VS now from the online store, the license you get will be valid for both ViEmu/VS “Classic”and for ViEmu/VS2010.

In a few days we will have the mechanism in place for customers who bought ViEmu/VS a year or more ago to buy the upgrade. This upgrade will also include one more year of full support and free upgrades, for both ViEmu/VS “Classic” and ViEmu/VS2010. The price will be US $29. We feel it will be great value for money at that pricepoint, and we hope upgrading won’t be too steep for anyone.

All feedback is welcome.