Queqiao - A better bridge between Vim and Lua

Provides a higher-level interface for writing Vim plugins in Lua.

Why Queqiao?

In Chinese mythology, queqiao (or 鵲橋) is a bridge of birds that represents the Milky Way. Lua projects are typically named after astronomy/space terms (Telescope for unit testing, Orbit for MVC web development), so I figured a celestial bridge would be the perfect name for this project.

How do I say "queqiao?"

It sounds kind of like chweh-cheeow. For my butchered pronunciation, check http://hoelz.ro/projects/queqiao.

Why Lua?

Several reasons, actually.

Lua is easy to learn.

Lua is a dead-simple language; most people I know can get through the whole manual in an afternoon.

Lua is a "common denominator".

One of my favorite languages is Perl, but I realize that it's not everyone's favorite. I wanted people from all communities to make use of this plugin.

Lua is powerful.

In spite of (or perhaps because of) its simplicity, Lua is an extremely powerful language. Because of its features, implementing things like this:

    b.my_plugin_loaded = 1 -- equivalent to let b:my_plugin_loaded = 1

and this:

    function PrintNumLines()
        print(line '$')
    end --[[ equivalent to
      function! PrintNumLines()
        echo line('$')
      endfunction
    ]]
    -- you can even do :call PrintNumLines()!

are fairly simple.

If you're not satisfied with these reasons and need to have this functionality for your language, I encourage you to port it!

Contact Me

rob at hoelz.ro