> "do you agree with the statement: "If someone remade vim so that you can have variable fonts and some more gui goodness, that would be a good thing"?"
I don't think I would use it. But I'm curious by nature and I would probably try it out anyway, just like I did with all the ST2/Coda/Espresso/Vico/Chocolat/HappyEdit/Whatever that popped up in the last 2 to 3 years.
At some point in the past, I felt limited as a TextMate user and I "needed" a change which I happily found in Vim. The benefits, for me, were/are absolutely huge, but I would switch again if the benefits were comparable. Cosmetic changes are not enough for me obviously and, IMO, the things you propose would a) not provide any noticeable benefit and b) work only in GVim/MacVim which makes no sense at all considering Vim's philosophy.
But putting all of your ideas into a new project… I'd say "Go for it!". Keep in mind, though, that for a lot of Vim users the ability to run Vim in a terminal is absolutely mandatory. A shiny new GUI would be worse than useless.
The "optional" part of your comment is actually very important. Adding all those things as options would take a lot of time and effort and probably a lot of rewriting for… almost nothing.
> "But I think it's odd that you literally find nothing wrong with vim or nothing that can be improved."
I think that the problems you point out are not problems at all and thus, that they don't need fixing. Vim has a bunch of low-level limitations/problems that I would like to see fixed before making it prettier: archaic keypress handling, lack of multithreading, limited RTL support, dumb terminal in the GUI version, wonky and slow syntax engine, poor external interface…
These things are way more important, IMO, than changing the color of the bike shed.
I hated every second I spent in ST2, even more with vintage mode enabled and vintageEx installed. I really don't want Vim to go that direction and, I believe, its author doesn't want that either.
This is probably a hallmark of any sufficiently large, complex and popular software. There will be completely divergent (or at least different enough to believe themselves so) subsets of users with different use requirements. Without careful negotiation this can lead to deadlock.
Objecting to a feature enhancement that has no negative effect on your own preferred usage is probably not the best use of anyone's time. Exceptions can and should be made for changes which might accidentally affect your core usage though, such as changing the default rendering.
That said, I imagine any change in vim is going to get enough exercise that bugs will be found fairly quickly.
As for this specific feature, I imagine it would be some text hinting similar to coloring, but it would be ignored in console use, leaving gvim to do different font rendering based on hints.
I don't object out of spite. I'm certainly not the best or most experienced programmer here but I have an idea of the depth and spread of the changes that the proposed enhancements would require. The usefulness of these enhancements must be weighted against their impact on the code base and (and that's very important in Vim's case) the philosophy of the project.
Incorporating all these ideas into a new project, on the other hand…
I don't think I would use it. But I'm curious by nature and I would probably try it out anyway, just like I did with all the ST2/Coda/Espresso/Vico/Chocolat/HappyEdit/Whatever that popped up in the last 2 to 3 years.
At some point in the past, I felt limited as a TextMate user and I "needed" a change which I happily found in Vim. The benefits, for me, were/are absolutely huge, but I would switch again if the benefits were comparable. Cosmetic changes are not enough for me obviously and, IMO, the things you propose would a) not provide any noticeable benefit and b) work only in GVim/MacVim which makes no sense at all considering Vim's philosophy.
But putting all of your ideas into a new project… I'd say "Go for it!". Keep in mind, though, that for a lot of Vim users the ability to run Vim in a terminal is absolutely mandatory. A shiny new GUI would be worse than useless.
The "optional" part of your comment is actually very important. Adding all those things as options would take a lot of time and effort and probably a lot of rewriting for… almost nothing.
> "But I think it's odd that you literally find nothing wrong with vim or nothing that can be improved."
I think that the problems you point out are not problems at all and thus, that they don't need fixing. Vim has a bunch of low-level limitations/problems that I would like to see fixed before making it prettier: archaic keypress handling, lack of multithreading, limited RTL support, dumb terminal in the GUI version, wonky and slow syntax engine, poor external interface…
These things are way more important, IMO, than changing the color of the bike shed.
I hated every second I spent in ST2, even more with vintage mode enabled and vintageEx installed. I really don't want Vim to go that direction and, I believe, its author doesn't want that either.