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+Why lua? or questions about yzis
+################################
+
+:date: 2005-04-13T23:45:00
+:category: computer
+
+(This article is a slightly edited version of my post to `comp.editors`_
+newsgroup).
+
+I just want to vent my frustration with state of vim on KDE. I hoped
+that in the Unix world we will get sooner or later even in GUI world to
+the situation equivalent to the one at console, where you have your
+$EDITOR set and everything just works (of course, I have it empty, so
+vim is what I get). However, as far as I can tell I have these options
+at the present (using KDE 3.3.2):
+
+* suck it up and use native KWrite & co. Not that this option wouldn’t
+  have some temptation for me (coming originally from M$-Windows,
+  although many years ago, I still feel rather well with Shift+arrows,
+  Ctrl+[xcvspo]), but there are two things missing:
+
+1. scripting -- although Kate is going to have support for KJS Very
+   Soon(TM) it will take years (if ever) to have so developed base of
+   scripts as there is currently available for vim (and Emacs, but my
+   religious needs are well satisfied by my Lord Jesus Christ, I do not
+   need any other religion, thank you :-)). Currently I am getting
+   really dependent on VimOutliner (I am a Debian maintainer of its
+   package), I am in the process of developing Qualitative analysis
+   tools based on Vim (and some Qt-C++ dialogs, maybe later KDE, but
+   I have to learn programming with KDE and C++ first), I have ongoing
+   flirt with vim-latexsuite, etc.
+
+2. and it wouldn’t help me anyway, because there are so many programs
+   which don’t use kpart technology for the editing (KMail, KNode --
+   that one at least is willing to open external editor in new window,
+   how is the situation with editing box in Konqueror?); shoot! I know
+   `it is not KVim’s developers’ fault`_, but it seems to me that
+   non-availability of any good KDE vim editor doesn’t help (see below).
+
+* Forget about KDE-only solution and use GVim for Gnome (which is what
+  I do now). Aside from being plain ugly (sorry, I am used to KDE
+  look&feel; consider my brain to be degenerated if you are Gnome user),
+  I get really crappy support for vimpart (it basically doesn’t work at
+  all) and of course full power of vim (which is what matters most, so
+  I am grinding my teeth and hold it).
+
+* Hope for something better.
+
+The most frustrating part of this situation is that there doesn’t seem
+to be any good solution coming, so point #3 sucks a lot. KVim is
+officially dead (although it sucked in many ways, it was by far the best
+solution to at least some of my problems and I was its somehow happy
+user, until it was eliminated from Debian) and there doesn’t seem to be
+any replacement coming.
+
+Now, we are getting to yzis. Of course, that I know about that, but I am
+afraid it won’t be answer to my problems. I have tried to install M3++
+(from the package 20050430-1) and I found it to be somehow nice but
+alpha quality. Nothing bad about that (I have a four month daughter, so
+I know that we were all young and we all did mess into diapers), but
+worse thing is that kyzis doesn’t seem to be much promising.
+
+However, before saying anything else, let me note one more thing. This
+message is about personal gripes and I do not want to say that you
+should even react to them -- I perfectly understand that you are
+volunteers doing what matters to you and you have no obligation towards
+me whatsoever. Let me just vent my frustration, please.
+
+1. NIH syndrom everywhere -- why in the h..ll, it is not just a KDE C++
+   clone of vim? Why it is not compatible with vim’s syntax files and
+   scripts? The most important reason, why I am not using
+   Kate/KWrite/etc.  is that I have all these scripts available for vim.
+   And I do not think, that anybody will redevelop VimOutliner, and
+   myriad other small scripts in Lua, just because it is theoretically
+   better language than the vimscript one (and I don’t like it that
+   much, but it doesn’t matter -- Perl is also ugly as hell and yet how
+   successful it is). Have you ever saw `a list of Emacs clones`_? It is
+   quite long and impressive list of totally dead projects, and they are
+   all dead, because Gnus doesn’t work there (or Calc, or AucTeX, or
+   PSGML, or fill-in any other popular Emacs mode). And BTW, elvis and
+   vile are IMHO not doing that well against vim either (whenever, I ask
+   something about vi, it is assumed I mean vim), but I may be terribly
+   wrong in this respect.
+
+   Or in other words, isn’t creating yet another vi clone with GUI
+   extension, something similar to rewriting program (actually, it is
+   rewriting a program)? For that see, of course, `Joel on software`_
+   and `Jamie Zawinski’s comment about Apple choosing KHTML instead of
+   Gecko for Safari`_ or here_.
+
+2. Although I am not programmer, so I cannot comment much about reasons
+   why KVim was killed, I still do not feel right about it. After all,
+   it DID work. Poorly, but at least as a proof of concept it was
+   persuasive enough to make it work well, wasn’t it? Now, we will have
+   to wait for couple of years before yzis stabilize, before we can
+   repeat argument on KMail/KNode/etc. people to finally use kpart for
+   editor, and even after that the result will be suboptimal to well
+   working kvim. Oh, well.
+
+3. It is slow as molasses. I understand that it is alpha-version, but
+   having an experience with kvim (and to some extent with gvim and
+   kwrite as well), I am really afraid that it is going to be far from
+   vim, I was used to. There used to be a times, when vi users joked
+   about EMACS, that it is “Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping”.
+   Well, ``free`` shows that I have 250 MB of RAM, but still I think
+   that this joke went slightly out of popularity these days. Oh well.
+
+
+I wonder what reactions I will get on NG.
+
+.. _`comp.editors`:
+    news:comp.editors
+.. _`it is not KVim’s developers’ fault`:
+    http://groups-beta.google.com/group/linux.debian.maint.kde/browse_thread/thread/d8863e0dd351e54
+.. _`a list of Emacs clones`:
+    http://www.faqs.org/faqs/emacs-implementations/
+.. _`Joel on software`:
+    http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
+.. _`Jamie Zawinski’s comment about Apple choosing KHTML instead of Gecko for Safari`:
+    http://news.com.com/2100-1023-980492.html
+.. _here:
+    http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nomo.html