Re: New renderer prototypes ?

On Wednesday, 9 August 2017 22:57:26 UTC+2, Bram Moolenaar wrote:
> Mikhail wrote:
>
> > Are there existing ideas, prototypes or forks of VIM
> > with interactive GUI?
> > I believe a decend GUI engine can boost
> > the editing productivity by means of advanced
> > interactive features.
> > With a GUI I don't mean of course menus/buttons, but
> > the design of the interaction and visual feedback, e.g.
> > navigation, scrolling, more mouse features.
> >
> > Also I am very interested in realistic fonts, which could
> > quickly improve the reading experience.
>
> Not sure why you call this "renderer". It seems it's more about
> interactive elements.

The code which composes and draws everything in the window I called a renderer.
Probably it is not very exact term.

Having a proportional font is the most wanted feature for me.
I am totally satisfied with other features in VIM
but they all could be pixel-precise and much easier
to implement if we'd move from the tile-based GUI to the fully graphical mode.
There exist decent libraries to do all related things, I'd probably
use the SDL library or similar analog.

I understand the dilemma here, e.g. if I'll get nice proportional font,
but as a result, much slower editor response and startup time, I would not
be happy, still I will choose proportional font for long work, since it
is much better reading experience.
Here is an anecdote from my practice: for almost everything
code-like I use VIM, but for the rest simple
edits I use Notepad, and I realise that the _only_ reason
I do so is the pleasure of a readable proportional font.
So one of the key aspects for my judgement of an IDE or a code editor
would be undoubtfully the text rendering and fonts.

>
> > Currently I consider VIM a perfect editor and
> > it would be hard to name something that is
> > limiting it.
> > But the GUI is, well, not enabling the above mentioned
> > luxuries :)
> >
> > So how realistic is the scenario where VIM becomes
> > these "features"?
> > I understand intuitively that these "features" are the core of
> > the application in this case. So it is more precise to
> > ask whether the developers will consider prototype
> > proposals adressing these features?
>
> Vim has always been used in a terminal just as often as in the GUI. We
> prefer functionality to be available in both. Doesn't need to look
> exactly the same, that would be impossible, but it must be possible to
> use mappings, plugins, etc. both in the GUI and the terminal the same
> way. This does add restrictions to what's possible in the GUI.

I know too little about how VIM is designed internally :(
Theoretically, I suppose it is feasable to substitute
the graphical part without breaking (too much) the compatibility.
Still most logic that are bound to the tile-based nature of
current GUI must be retooled completely.



Mikhail

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