I'll pay vim many compliments, "minimal" is not one of them.

What i like about vim's UI is that it's very reduced to a minimum. New users have no idea how powerful it is.

Come to the Dark Side. We have buffers.

Wait, which dark side? (or possibly, what is the light side?) Both vim and emacs have buffers, including special ones...

I use the arg list. I looked into buffers a while back, but they seemed overcomplex for what I need (same with windows). Checking the vim help just now, buffers and arglist seem (mostly) equivalent.

I'm curious: do you find there's specific advantages of buffers over the arglist? And, do you use buffers as well as, or instead of, the arglist?

The only problem I find is that if I start two vims in different xterms, sometimes I'll want to paste between them - so I need to use the system clipboard, instead of vim.

Ah, my mistake. I meant registers, not buffers.

:help registers

As to your "I'm curious" question, I use both. Mostly arglist, and I resort to buffers when the arglist has gone squirrely (editing an additional file after starting with a number of files, e.g.).

For example, edit a small number of files (vi *).

:files will show you the list of files.

Repeating :n will take you through each file.

:e newfile to create a new file

:files will show you the list, with newfile at the end.

:rew to rewind the list

:n will get you to the last file on the original list, but not to newfile.

:bn will then get you to newfile.

I've had that problem, here's what I do:

:arge

will do the same as :e, but also add it to the arglist. You can prefix with a number to insert it at a particular position, especially :0arge and :99arge for first and last respectively. It only adds one at a time; several can be added with :arga (including recursive wildcards such as /*.java)

:argd %

will delete the current file (which % expands to) from the arglist.

BTW: I dislike pressing : and <CR> so instead of :n, my .vimrc has:

:map <C-n> <Esc>:n<CR> " next file, with control-n :map <C-p> <Esc>:N<CR> " prev file, with control-p

The recursive wildcard didn't come out right. It should be:

    **/*.java

And the mapping is:

    :map <C-n> <Esc>:n<CR>    " next file, with control-n
    :map <C-p> <Esc>:N<CR>    " prev file, with control-p

I just watched the video entitled "Working with Buffers" so I don't quite get your reference

In the parent to my comment was this sentence: "New users have no idea how powerful it is."

That reminded me of this quote from Star Wars Episode VI: "You don't know the power of the Dark Side."

Which reminded me of the bumper sticker or T shirt: "Come to the Dark Side. We have cookies."

Which led to my comment: "Come to the Dark Side. We have buffers."

Buffers isn't important, except as something Vim has that can substitute for cookies.