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Posted on Nov 29, 2018 • Updated on Dec 7, 2018

VimConf 2018 Report

#vim #neovim #conferences

What is VimConf?

VimConf is the international conference of Vim held in Japan.
This conference is organized by VimConf Jumbikai that mainly consists of vim-jp members.
I think VimConf is the only one conference about text editors all over the world.

VimConf 2018 held Nov 24th in Japan.

The conference is 6th of VimConf and this time is very special and memorable to organizers.
Because the Author of Vim, Mr. Bram Moolenaar, come to Japan and attend the conference!

The organizers had a dream that they invite him to the conference someday when they held the first VimConf in 2013.
Someone said "just a kidding!" when organizers tell them about that.
But, the dream has come true for six years.

I'd like to quote the sentence from VimConf 2018 website. That is the best explanation of the conference.

VimConf is a place to share your love of Vim to everyone

I explains a summery of each keynotes, sessions and lighitning talks. Then write my impressions.
If you want to know more about contents, see the movies on youtube or session's slides.

Keynotes

What is the next feature?

presenter: Yasuhiro Matsumoto aka mattn
slide: Keynote - What is the next feature?
video:

This keynote tell us 2 things. One is why vim-jp started and what they doing. The other is 3 proposals of new feature from mattn!

vim-jp is very famous to Vim users in Japan. I usually refer to the site when I want to know something difficult about Vim. vim-jp seems very active development and discussion for Vim.
I was impressed that mattn said "vim-jp did only two things from started. Feedback to vim dev group about bug and patch, and writing patch."
Today, vim-jp is one of ideal managed OSS community. But what they did is very simple.

Also I was surprised that Vim became a Web Server in the presentation.
Vim evolved to a Web Application Platform.
If you wonder what was going on the presentation, watch the video!

Vim: From hjkl to a platform for plugins

presenter: Bram Moolenaar
slide: Vim: From hjkl to a platform for plugins
video:

Mr.Bram is the author of Vim. He talked about 3 things, Vim's history, plugin performance tuning and (plugin support poll)[https://github.com/vim/vim/issues/3573]
He explained how Vim evolved from the start to the recent. I was suprised to how big PDP-11 was. I thought that is refrigerator rather than a computer.
Also, I was excited about new feature ideas like official dependency manager, Compile Vim script etc.
I was happy to hear the keynote directly from Mr.Bram!

Sessions

Migrating plugins to standard features

presenter: daisuzu
slide: Migrating plugins to standard features
video:

How many plugins do you install to vim? If you count them and you think it may be a bit too much, this session is very helpful.
The session told me that vim have how various functions in default. Vim seems poor at first glance, but they are just hiding. The more you use vim, the more you find them!
I decided check my installed plugins and organize them well someday.

Modes

presenter: Tatsuhiro Ujihisa
slide: Modes
video:

This session described the vim implementation by demo with GNU Project Debugger. I didn't understand the session content perfectly, but felt the convenience of :Termdebug.
I was surprised to the demo because I didn't think Vim support step by step execution!

A day in the life of (ordinary) Vimmer

presenter: OKURA Masafumi
slide: A day in the life of (ordinary) Vimmer
video:

This session explained tips from an one ordinary day of presenter. Demos were not succeeded, tips were very practical to use from tomorrow!

Modern editor-independent development environment for PHP

presenter: USAMI Kenta
slides: Modern editor-independent development environment for PHP
video:

This session described about today's development environment focusing on PHP. I didn't know that PHP has a lot of funcsions lke abstract class, trait interface, etc until this session.
I recognized VimConf is a conference of Text editor. If vim was the only text editor in the world, did vim evolved so far? I don't think so. Text editors have evolved as they mutually influence each other.
So, we are friends that wish to become text editors more useful and convenient.

Effective Modern Vim scripting

presenter: Alisue
slide: Effective Modern Vim scripting
video:

If you are interested in creating vim plugin, I strongly recommend to watch the video and see the slide.
The presenter explained how to write modern vim script step by step. This was very easy to understand.
I want to fall into dark side motivated by the presentation.
See you again at the dark side!

Oni - The GUI-fication of Neovim

presenter: Akin
slide: ?
video:

Have you ever thought vim become an IDE? I have.
If you want to make vim as IDE, you need to spend a lot of time and customize .vimrc.
Manage .vimrc is very very excited but it's time consuming.
So, Oni solve the problem. You can use IDE like Vim just install Oni!
It's very easy and fantastic. Why don't you try Oni?

Vim ported to WebAssembly

presenter: rhysd
slide: Vim ported to WebAssembly
video:

We use Vim everywhere for example Mac, Linux and Windows etc..
Today, new wave is coming and we also use Vim on Web Browser!
Try https://rhysd.github.io/vim.wasm/
This presentation how the presenter ported Vim to WebAssembly. It seems magic of WebAssembly.
I'm looking forward to the future work of wasm.vim!

LTs

Lighitning Talks were also very excited.
Talks are very short but contains various things!
See the slides for more details.

videos:

After party

After party was awesome. Participants talked about a lot of things like Emacs, programing languages, their work, Of course Vim in Japanese and English. Foods and drinks were delicious.
I satisfied with the after party.

Conclusion

VimConf 2018 was great and awesome. We didn't know where and when the next VimConf 't will be held.
I can't wait for the next VimConf!

Thanks for Mr.Bram, organizers, staffs and all related people!
Thank you for your reading. If you find any mistakes about this article, feel free to point it out.

Finally, I'd like to say every one.

"Happy Vimming!"

P.S. Updated at Dec 7 adding videos. You can check all videos about VimConf 2018 at vim-jp youtube channel!