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Vim is a vi "clone" for Unix, Windows, MacOS, Amiga, VMS, BeOS and just about any other platform that can be imagined. Vim is more than just another vi clone, though. It adds lots of really cool features that are not available in standard vi. Some of those features are:
  • Syntax highlighting
  • Multi-level undo
  • Split screen editing
  • Autocommands
  • Macro recording
  • A GUI for Windows, X, and others
  • Online help
  • Much, much more...
To get started, just download a copy from ftp.vim.org/pub/vim. If you have a Unix machine, you will have to compile it yourself, but I have never had any problems, so it should go smoothly. Then, you will probably want to get yourself a good vimrc file. I suggest using mine. It is fairly well documented, and has some pretty good defaults. You can also get my gvimrc, but there is not much to that. On Unix machines, you will need to rename the files to .vimrc and .gvimrc, respectively, and place them in your home directory. On Windows machines, the files will need to be renamed to _vimrc and _gvimrc, respectively. They should be placed wherever you installed Vim.