Vim 8.2 Released, with popup window mechanism
December 13, Vim 8.2, the latest version of text editor Vim, was released. One of the major changes is the support for popup windows.
Vim is an improved Vi-based editor. With configuration flexibility, it runs on various platforms. Not only that it supports a wide range of programming languages and file formats, but it also comes with a lot of features like search and replace, undo tree with multiple levels, and plug-in extensions.
Vim 8.2 is the latest stable release, following the previous 8.1, which was released in May 2018. There are in total 2424 patches added to the new release.
Implemented with a popup window mechanism, it can show messages, function prototypes, and code snippets on top of the text, and can close and open easily. It was a highly requested feature. The development team has also released a game that exhibits the functionality of the popup windows.
Text properties is another feature that was as highly requested as the popup windows. This feature can handle something simple like highlighting text snippets or something complicated like using external parser to locate syntax items and highlighting them asynchronously.
Other major changes are the new Change Listener support, wider test coverage, many bug fixes, and updated documentation.
Vim 8.2 is available on the project’s web site.