I had learned about Vim’s ga (also invoked with :ascii) last year, when I made a video for characterize.vim. It seems someone else was also trying to make a better ga, hence betterga (via usevim).

This new kid on block was started in last month of 2014, and just got a few new commits last month. The following tables are the comparisons among all the implementations.

ga a
vanilla <a>  97,  Hex 61,  Octal 141
betterga <a> [LATIN SMALL LETTER A] 97, Hex 0x61, Octal 0141
characterize <a> 97, \141, U+0061 LATIN SMALL LETTER A
ga ©
vanilla <©> 169, Hex 00a9, Octal 251
betterga <©> [COPYRIGHT SIGN] 169, Hex 0xa9, Octal 0251
characterize <©> 169, \251, U+00A9 COPYRIGHT SIGN, ^KCo, ^KcO, :copyright:, &copy;
ga 中
vanilla <中> 20013, Hex 4e2d, Octal 47055
betterga <中> 20013, U+4E2D <unknown>
characterize <中> [CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-4E2D] 20013, Hex 0x4e2d, Octal 047055
ga 😃
vanilla <😃> 128515, Hex 0001f603, Octal 373003
betterga <😃> 128515, Hex 0001f603, Octal 373003
characterize <😃> 128515, U+1F603 SMILING FACE WITH OPEN MOUTH, :smiley:

I don’t think anyone would doubt that characterize is the most informative among them all. It can also provides Vim diagraphs (Ctrl+K).

Frankly, I don’t see any reason to have betterga when I see no better features than characterize, which had not got any new commits for more than a year. betterga has templating, but I don’t think that would give it a full score point and it also needs Vim (7.4+) to be compiled with Python support while characterize is pure Vim script. What I would call this is a waste of time for a duplicate with less features.

Nevertheless, a code is a code, time was spent, whether is wasted or not, an effort was made. The only plus side I can say is it has a very good name.

Anyway, it was little more than a year, but I’d never used ga once until betterga, and probably never would again, unless there is “Yet another :ascii command.”

betterga is made by Ryosuke Ito under the MIT License, requires Vim 7.4+ with Python 2.4+/3.