I'm the project founder and also dislike it. I admit it was one of the first things that came to my head(The name was inspired by some of @Shougo plugins). If I knew the project would get so popular, I would have put more thought into it. Too late now :(

I hope eventually the community will just use the 'nvim' abbreviation to refer to Neovim, just like 'vim' is 'vi improved' abbreviated

> If I knew the project would get so popular, I would have put more thought into it.

It's alright. You're doing a great job though, regardless. I really can't wait till it's done!

> I hope eventually the community will just use the 'nvim'

Is there a chance the project might choose a different name? If not, nvim isn't so bad. It could be better, though. A good name is important.

Considering that there's already an "nvi", that might be confusing... but I agree, a name change may be warranted. (personally I like it)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvi

There isn't usually too much confusion, at least among users, about the different between vi and vim. Also, have never heard of nvi, whereas nvim seems like it's going places.

The name is temporary, and discussion about the name has been temporarily halted because there are more important concerns.

https://github.com/neovim/neovim/issues/272#issuecomment-370...

Thank you. This is good news.

My understanding of "Ex" is that it is a standalone program that happens to be implemented within Vim, which I think is a bit of an oddity. A radical departure for Neovim to take would be to change the key bindings or go to modeless operation.

Throw the baby out with the bath water much?

Elaborate, please.

(I've gone and elaborated on my own comment. I might have misworded my intent.)

You want to change the name from neovim because they want to remove functionality that I'm guessing maybe 1% of the users use regularly. Even though for 99%, neovim is vim only modernized and cleaned up. It's illogical as you're doing a disservice to the users, and neovim is a clear name that describes what it is. New vim.

- It is a fork of Vim. - It is omitting some features. - It is adding a number of high level features. - It will not be fully backwards compatible.

Prefixing 'new' to the name of the forked project is as lazy as it can get [1]. 'Neo' is one step from that.

Vim itself wouldn't be a good name if it was just meaning "Vi iMproved", but 'Vim' is also a dictionary word meaning "energy; enthusiasm". A positive dictionary word, and a pseudo-acronym. That works well.

The dictionary has many words that start with Vi, or have it as a substring: http://www.scrabblefinder.com/starts-with/vi/

While just using a dictionary word may be a bit lazy, it is the allusion I was referring to in my previous comment. It would be an allusion to Vim also being a dictionary word, chosen because it starts with 'vi'. The cycle of improvement would continue.

For example, 'Vigor' would be a decent name, as "Vim and Vigor"[2] are a common phrase.

Definitely not saying that should be the name, but it's a path to try and see what the community might like.

[1]: The laziest is Nintendo's "New 3DS": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Nintendo_3DS [2]: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/vim+and+vigor

Vim wasn't backwards compatible with vi. And your reasoning lacks a logical basis, with all points being subjective.

> Vim wasn't backwards compatible with vi.

Yes, but, it tried to be with the 'compatible' option: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/options.html#'compatib... (Not to say it fully succeeded.)

> And your reasoning lacks a logical basis, with all points being subjective.

If by points you mean my list at the top, those are facts. Past the list, everything else is subjective, yes. Liking and disliking a name is a subjective matter. Whether a name is 'appropriate' is very subjective. Should I have made a disclaimer that it was my opinion?

Um, no, they aren't facts at all.

Vigor already exists as a cruel parody of vi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigor_(software)

But I like your idea. Something like Vittle as a whittled-down version of vim.

Bram hasn't complained about their usage of the name (unlike the Standard Markdown fiasco). And as a Vim user what they're doing seems what Vim always wanted to do before Bram was sidetracked by other projects: they're making Vi Improved. A lot of the changes they're making seem to be redoing the Vim internals using 21st century software development practices (continuous integration: builds, tests, linting, refactoring, removing deprecated bits, etc).

I actually hope that Neovim is temporary and Bram can gracefully accept the Neovim code as the official Vim once Neovim is stable. And Vim can become "Legacy Vim", supporting modes and OSs Neovim doesn't support anymore. Vim itself does the same thing - it has downloads for older versions in order to support MS DOS, for example (I'm not 100% sure about this - the www.vim.org page gives me a "Connection reset" right now - but I remember it doing this).

> I actually hope that Neovim is temporary and Bram can gracefully accept the Neovim code as the official Vim once Neovim is stable.

Me too. I would rather it become an actual 'new' Vim.