I am the current maintainer of the RISC OS port of Vim and this page serves as a means to distribute the latest stable version of Vim for RISC OS, as well as providing links to some useful Vim resources. Version 6.1 (and indeed 6.3) now compiles happily for the GUI too but it won’t be available for download until I’ve sorted out all the runtime files for it. If you want it sooner, pester me.
Why use Vim?
Although Zap is brilliant, it isn’t all that easy to extend it to allow syntax highlighting for things not covered by existing modules. Vim is very widely used and it is likely there will be a syntax colouring mode for anything you might choose to edit (and if not, it shouldn’t be too difficult to create your own). This download of version 5.8 ships with 297 different syntax files (including, for example, PHP and XML), which does mean that you’ll need a filing system which allows many files in a directory - I'd recommend either E+ format via RISC OS 4 or later or raFS. You will also need at least RISC OS 3.5 or some other way of using Dynamic Areas as Vim (and ZapRedraw) use them.
Vim 5.8 has been tested as the GUI version as well as an ANSI task with Nettle, and should also work in full screen mode too. I certainly used 5.7 to edit files out of the desktop.
If there are any problems with Vim on your system please tell me with as much detail as possible, including version of ZapRedraw/ZapFonts in use and OS version.
Yes! I want to download Vim. 
Note that there are two parts:
the syntax files and the rest of the application. Given the number of syntax files, raFS or
RISC 4 and later E+ format is recommended.
Useful links:
- The Vim Webring
- Favourite Sven Guckes's Vim page
- Vim online—everything you might need?
- You might want to join the mailing-list at vim.org, or buy the Vim book. You’ll also find a fair bit of Vi(m) discussion on the comp.editors newsgroup.
Much of the real work of the RISC OS port was done by Thomas Leonard and others up to version 5.4a and I've been building current versions since early in 2001 (5.7). The major hurdle to doing a release at present is checking all the references in the syntax files and filetype information but I am looking at making it rather easier and quicker in the future.
Any problems/instabilities are most probably my fault, so blame me and I’ll try to sort them out. This version is untested on RISC OS earlier than 4 but should be fine (although I wouldn't recommend using it on a machine with little memory).
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