Are questions about vi, vim, and other clones on-topic here?

Question

$a = trueOrFalse("are they on-topic?")
$b = trueOrFalse("is this the best site for these questions?")
if (!$a || !$b)
{
    pleasePrintBestSiteFor("questions about vi and clones")
}

_{*it just made more sense to me this way, and no, i have no idea what language that is.}

Answer 1

Despite the fact that these tools are cross-platform, I think questions about vi and vim are on topic and interesting. I also think that questions about other popular text editors on *nix systems should be on topic. A few things to consider,

1. We have already have had a number of questions on these topics that have produced very interesting answers.

2. vi is part of POSIX and its use tends to be pretty central in system administration.

3. Since text is the fundamental interface of UNIX, the most popular text editors on unix are probably important.

4. Many unix programs adopt either a vi or emacs style of line/text manipulation (see less for an example of the former and Bash (by default) for an example of the latter), meaning that knowledge of vi/vim and emacs helps throughout your use of the system.

In fact, I would love to see more questions related to text editors.

Answer 2

I'm strongly in favor of allowing platform-agnostic questions about applications that are primarily from the unix world, such as ksh and vi. I'm also weakly in favor of allowing platform-agnostic questions about cross-platform applications such as Firefox.

However I think it's a bad idea to allow questions related to the integration of Vim, Emacs and so on in Windows (e.g. “Where do I put my .vimrc on Windows?”). That's not because I don't want to see such questions (I actually do, but if I didn't, that's what ignored tags are for), but because I don't expect there to be much Windows expertise on this site. So Windows-specific issues should be on an as yet hypothetical Windows Stack Exchange (or Microsoft Stack Exchange?), or failing that on Super User.

Answer 3

I would be most glad if the central place for vim questions, were right here because many vim question are tightly coupled with questions about sed, awk, external shell commands, and after all vim itself is a text editor originating in Unix (I know, it can be run on Windows, too, But it's still a Unix tool).

Most questions would probably be just vim-specific. And most people that know Vim well, are probably using Unix, and their collective knowledge would be most available/concentrated on unix.se (hopefully)

And even if there are Windows specific questions, some of them would arguably still be on-topic on Unix.SE because it is a Unix tool, albeit ported on Windows.

Answer 4

First, I'll want to remind you this thread (which was in a better forum IMO): Vim questions: do they belong to Stack Overflow or Super User? were a bigger majority than the number of people in favour of using SE/unix have already expressed themselves in favour of SO.

Now my opinion. I'm quite tired of this scattering of the vim community -- which I fail to see the point in this tag based world. One wants quality responses, it means the people knowing the tool have to follow 3 different sites (of course it would have been too simple to post directly were vim gurus live (its official mailing-list)). As of today, we have 38 vim questions on SE/unix, 491 on SU, and 2799 on SO.

Must we abandon the other sites to use this seldom used site (regarding vim questions) ? Or must we continue where the knowledge has already proven to be ? If we must abandon a site, it would be best to migrate all questions from the site abandoned.

Now, of all the sites, this one is as appropriate as SO. Indeed the majority of vim questions (and answers) transcend OSes issues (they are platform agnostic, as programming questions are). So far, I have seen a little bit more vim questions in the context of vim being used for programming tasks than questions about vim being used on some very specific platform. Moreover, it's not rare that some seemingly innocent questions that could have fit on SU require vim scripting, (dare I say programming?) skills (I've seen this one today).

As a conclusion, I'd vote: stay were most questions already are -> SO

Answer 5

$a = trueOrFalse("are they on-topic?")
// TRUE
$b = trueOrFalse("is this the best site for these questions?")
// FALSE
if (!$a || !$b)
{ // !TRUE || !FALSE -> This is never called!
    pleasePrintBestSiteFor("questions about vi and clones")
}

Your meta code doesn't include vi clones, so I'll explain it in human language.

They question about Vi/Vim are on-topic here, because vi/ex is text editor created for specially the Unix, however since Feb 2015 you should consider posting questions about Vi/Vim usage, scripts and plugins at the dedicated Vim Stack Exchange site where they belong. See: What is considered to be vi?

Questions about shell vi mode (set -o vi) should be asked here, however if you've questions about not compatible clones and 3rd party integration (such as [vintage-mode][2] in Sublime, evil, etc.), it should be asked at the SuperUser.

Questions about programming (such as regex), they still belong to StackOverflow.

If you got confused and posted on the wrong site, flag the question to be considered for migration (not older than 60 days).

^{Related: Vim questions: do they belong to Stack Overflow or Super User?}