I don't like language-specific versions, it makes maintenance very difficult. My goal is that all languages are covered by the main distribution.

Most current developments are concentrated around Unicode. Vim uses UTF-8 internally. It should allow editing files with any encoding, by doing a conversion on file I/O. Unicode allows doing this without loss of information.

Arabic | Chinese | Farsi (Persian) | Hangul (Korean) | Hebrew | Japanese

RiLe = RightLeft (Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew) [980421]

The compile option "rightleft" comprizes the code that enables writing "from right to left", and thus supports these languages. See also the page on RightLeft Editing.

Hangul (Korean)

The Korean language port of vim is named "ko-vim". On 980420 the latest version was "ko-vim-5.0.1.0.3.8". It seems to be maintained by [email protected] I have yet to ask someone here to test it for me.

ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/FreeBSD-current/ports/korean/vim.tar

Chinese

[todo]

Japanese [980723,000605,001024]

[001024] FreeBSD: S. Taoka [email protected]

http://www.freebsd.org/ports/japanese.html

There seems to be a port for Japanese for vim-3 - "jvim".

jvim HomePage [last update on 990715?]:

http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA003457/vim/

Bram Moolenaar as "featured artist": http://www.vector.co.jp/vpack/browse/person/an008057.html

Note: I cannot read these pages as I do not know Japanese. (Wish I did.) So I am just guessing. If you can provide me with more info (especially a translation of those pages) then do get into contact with me. Thanks!

The "page" http://www.etl.go.jp:8080/etl/People/[email protected]/onew suggests that Yutaka Sato [email protected] is involved with the development of jvim. The jvim3.x web page was written by [email protected].

JVim seems to use "onew", an "FEP" (Front-End Processor), ie a program which converts phonetics to a sequence of characters of various writing systems (kanji, katakana, hiragana). For example, when you type in the word 'kanji' then the FEP presents you with various possibilities of the correct way to display it. Japanese has many homonyms, so "kanji" could mean both "Japanese Characters" and "Feelings" and you have to choose the correct characters to match the meaning you want. FEPs will also usually keep track of which character choices you have made in the past and present your options based on this, so that the ones you use most often pop up first.

The usage of an FEP is much easier when it is integrated into the editor. The alternative is to use a program like 'kinput' which pops up a separate window where the conversion is done. Integrating an FEP to vim is quite a large task, which is why the Japanese version is often way behind the standard release. Also, different people prefer different FEPs, so there is often an option to compile with different ones. Other popular FEPs include "canna" and "Wnn".

980723: The current version is jvim-5.1beta4 and includes support for OLE. (see doc/if_ole.txt for more info). The jvim-5.1beta1 did not have support for OLE, and it doesn't seem to be available any more. I am told that the non-OLE version had a menu bar which was quite helpful.

Thanks to Jim Gottlieb [email protected] [980421,980424,980427] and Norman Diamond [email protected] [980723] for the info!

000605: Just found the following address on the previously mentioned page:

http://welcome.to/vim-jp/

URL:         http://www.math.fu-berlin.de/~guckes/vim/langport.html
Created:     Fri Oct 13 18:00:00 MET DST 2000