Interface
Like vi, Vim's interface is not based on menus or icons but on commands given in a text user interface; its GUI mode, gVim, adds menus and toolbars for commonly used commands but the full functionality is still expressed through its command linemode.
Vim has a built-in tutorial for beginners (accessible through the "vimtutor" command). There is also the Vim Users' Manual that details Vim's features. This manual can be read from within Vim, or found online.
Vim also has a built-in help facility (using the
:help command) that allows users to query and navigate through commands and features.Features and improvements over vi
Vim has a vi compatibility mode but when not in this mode Vim has many enhancements over vi. However, even in compatibility mode, Vim is not 100% compatible with vi as defined in the Single Unix Specification and POSIX (e.g., Vim does not support vi's open mode, only visual mode). Vim has nevertheless been described as “very much compatible with Vi”.
Some of Vim's enhancements include completion, comparison and merging of files (known as vimdiff), a comprehensive integrated help system, extended regular expressions, scripting languages (both native and through alternative scripting interpreters such as Perl, Python, Ruby, Tcl, etc.) including support for plugins, agraphical user interface (known as gvim), limited integrated development environment-like features, mouse interaction (both with and without the GUI), folding, editing of compressed or archived files in gzip, bzip2, zip, and tar format and files over network protocols such as SSH, FTP, and HTTP, session state preservation,spell checking, split (horizontal and vertical) and tabbed windows, unicode and other multi-language support, syntax highlighting, trans-session command, search and cursor position histories, multiple level and branching undo/redo history which can persist across editing sessions, and visual mode.
