Description Justin Wells 2004-07-07 15:22:37 EDT

I raised this point at a JavaOne eclipse BOF but we never got a chance to talk 
about it. Here is the idea in full:

You should be able to plug in an alternative editor rather than using the 
editor that comes with eclipse. For example, you should be able to write a 
plugin that would wrap around GVIM to provide VI functionality in eclipse. Note 
that I am not talking about "VI key bindings", which would not add any 
functionality to eclipse, but rather I am talking about using GVIM as an OLE 
object within Eclipse via a plugin--gaining access to the full power of the 
GVIM (or other) software.

For reference a competing product, the Intellij/IDEA IDE, has a plugin that 
wraps around GVIM as an OLE object. It renders the text within the Intellij 
window so that all of the smart IDE features still work (syntax highlighting, 
hyper navigation, mouse-overs, etc.) but the text buffer itself is actually 
managed by vim. It is not just a set of keybindings that are VI like, it 
actually wraps VIM as an OLE object. The plugin forwards the key strokes to the 
VIM editor, and VIM has support for this kind of use. The feature should not be 
VIM specific but should enable plugin writers to create plugins for any editor 
with API bindings.

That all said I do have to wonder why in this day in age anyone would ever set 
out to write a new editor. There are a lot of mature, reliable, well known, and 
widely used editors out there that are all better than the paltry homegrown and 
necessarily immature editor provided in Eclipse: gvim, emacs, ultraedit, 
textpad, etc., etc., etc. Allowing eclipse to integrate with the users 
default/preferred editor not only buys you a better editor, it provides for 
seamless integration with the rest of the platform, and saves you the trouble 
of having to write one!

Catching up with the functionality provided by VIM or EMACS or whatnot is a 
herculean task that will only serve to distract the eclipse team from working 
on its core values: the smarts about navigating, indexing, cross-referencing, 
refactoring, debugging, and generally building software.