Review: ViEmu

ViEmu 1.0, $69.95
NGEDIT Software
http://www.ngedit.com/viemu.html

I'm not one of those developers whose hands never leave the keyboard. Give me a choice between the keyboard and the trackball, and you can take the keyboard away. But I recognize that many, perhaps most, other developers think I'm nuts, and that they prefer the speed of doing everything with keyboard commands. For those people, the vi and vim text editors tend to be well-loved, and although I personally haven't been a vi/vim user since college (many years ago), I still hear from people who wish they could get the vi command set inside of Visual Studio .NET. At last, I've got an answer for those folks: use ViEmu.

You can't mimic the vi/vim input model by simply customizing Visual Studio, because it doesn't make any provision for multiple-keystroke commands. The folks at NGEDIT Software solved the problem by building an entire extension package that installs ViEmu as a separate editor type; right-click on a file in Solution Explorer and select "Open With" and you'll find ViEmu on the list. When you do, the resulting code window looks very much like the standard Visual Studio code editor window, right down to the color-coding and IntelliSense. There are a few subtle differences: at the top of the window you'll see a "- vi" on the tab, and at the bottom the status bar calls out "NORMAL -" to let you know which ViEmu mode you're in.

At that point, you can go to town. Want to move down five lines? Type 5_. Want to join two lines? Type J. Oops, undo, type u. If you don't know the vi/vim command set, just start typing, and you'll quickly make a hash of your text. Fortunately, there's a clear file of documentation that lays out which commands NGEDIT has implemented here. There are some command-line commands (such as :sp and :o),  and most of the regular commands, operators, and motions (no doubt a vi/vim expert, which I am not, can find the holes in the list). In my testing, ViEmu was as fast as the regular VS .NET editor (that is, it doesn't interfere with my ability to type code), and works seamlessly. If you like the VS .NET environment but you've been pining for vi, your ship has come in.

You can download a trial version from the Web site, and right now they're running a special introductory price of $49.95 to register a copy.

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Mike Gunderloy is the lead developer for Larkware and author of numerous books and articles on programming topics.