It used to be part of my Vim vocabulary... change to visual mode, place cursor to a search word, type * and all text between first and next search word would be highlighted. The highlighting can continue as long as you repeat pressing * and there is the next matching search word. Perfect set of commands to copy text, or simply as visual aid.
Coming back to Vim now after some time, this is not working on my configuration. What happens now is that only the letter under the cursor and all other such letters get highlighted.
I wonder if I have some conflict in my mappings or else? I use Vim v7.3. Anyone can help?
Vim does not have a visual mode command for *; this only works in normal mode. However, many people have a customization that supplies the super star visual variant, from Search for visually selected text - or a plugin like my SearchHighlighting plugin; its plugin page has links to many alternative plugins.
I guess you had something like that, too, but forgot about it. I also doubt that is was triggered by Ctrl + *; combinations of Ctrl and non-alphabetical letters mostly aren't available as unique mappings. The usual mapping is just *, overloading the original normal mode command for visual mode.
Vim 7.3 is from 2010 and very outdated. To become reacquainted with Vim (which I commend!), please choose a modern variant. It should be possible to install the latest version 8.1; if you can't find a proper package for your distribution (for Windows, check the binaries from either vim-win32-installer or tuxproject; on Linux, it's also not very difficult to compile it yourself (e.g. from the GitHub sources).
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I recently started using vim for writing markdown and latex files. Visual mode works great when copying lines or blocks of code, but when I'm writing, I often need to copy non-rectangular chunks of text. For example, what I'd like to be able to do is this:
But, with visual mode I can only seem to do this:
or this:
l
Is there a way to select the entire first line and only a portion of the second line?
All of Vim's modes are listed under :help vim-modes. Here is what it says about visual mode:
Visual mode This is like Normal mode, but the movement commands
extend a highlighted area. When a non-movement
command is used, it is executed for the highlighted
area. See |Visual-mode|.
Where you get a handy link to :help visual-mode, which is a whole section delving into every detail of the three visual modes, started with v, V, and <C-v>.
Note that it says this near the top:
This is introduced in section |04.4| of the user manual.
This means that visual mode is taught very early in the user manual and, by consequence, that it is a very basic and foundational topic. It also implies that going through the linked section of the user manual is a prerequisite.
This is the second paragraph of that very basic section:
You start Visual mode by pressing "v". You move the cursor over the text you
want to work on. While you do this, the text is highlighted. Finally type
the operator command.
Note that it says v, not V.
Visual mode, by way of v, again, is also casually introduced in lesson 5.3 of $ vimtutor.
All that to say that, everywhere visual mode is mentioned in the built-in documentation, from the very basic vimtutor to the very extensive reference manual, v is systematically mentioned first.
I installed a vim 8.1 on the cluster I am using in my home folder. I also installed a number of plugins including YouCompleteMe. I then made an alias so that I can open the vim easier.
However, I found that my vim cannot delete letters very well. When I am writing I can delete what I just typed. But if I move the cursor to other places, then it cannot delete letters at all, unless I type in something at first.
I am using a Scientific Linux system developed by the Fermi Lab.
How can I solve this problem?
Thanks
This sounds like the default configuration of the :help 'backspace' option. If this doesn't contain start, you cannot remove characters over the start of insertion by pressing Backspace, only what got inserted before. Removal of characters via the x or d commands (:help deleting) should always work - anywhere. Else, you have a serious misconfiguration should inspect your ~/.vimrc and re-add plugins one by one.
If you're new to Vim (and using backspace for deletion in insert mode is a typical approach of people used to other, modeless editors), you should spend 30 minutes on the vimtutor that comes with it (see :help vimtutor). Then, there are several good resources, cheatsheets, and vi / Vim tutorials out there on the net. http://vimcasts.org/ has several short entertaining episodes that go beyond the basics.
Your problem could be fixed by putting
set backspace=indent,eol,start
into your ~/.vimrc. Also have a look at :help defaults.vim; by including that instead, you'll get other goodies and recommended settings as well! (The reason for the odd defaults is backwards compatibility.)
I feel like this is a very stupid question, but I can't seem to find the answer to this anywhere. I'm relatively new to vim. After a fresh install I installed the vim-LaTeX plugin, or the LaTeX-suite for vim. It works correctly apart for the fact that there are some commands I don't understand. It gives the following instruction:
To do this, visually select a portion of the text and press \ll while in visual mode. The visually selected portion will be saved to a temporary file with the preamble from the current document prepended. Latex-Suite will then switch focus to this temporary file and compile it
But if I press '\' it does nothing and double l moves the cursor to the right. I don't understand what I'm supposed to be doing, and I feel incredibly stupid. Sorry if off-topic.
The \ is the default value for the :help <Leader> key. Plugins are encouraged to start all default mappings with <Leader>. If you've redefined it, you need to use that key instead.
Otherwise, you need to press V \ L L (without Shift) in quick succession (by default within one second).
If you want to find out whether the plugin has been successfully installed and there's actually an action behind those keys, you can use either:
:verbose vmap <Leader>ll
:verbose vmap \ll
If Vim says No mapping found, or just lists other mappings starting with some of the keys, the plugin isn't installed properly, or you're not using it right.
Press v to go into visual mode. Then you can use your arrow keys to select text. After you've selected the text you want, type \ll.
That should be it.
It's the first time i noticed about the selection mode in vim when i accidentally triggered it from visual-line mode by <c-g>.
Vim already has visual mode for text selection what's the use case of selection mode, can anyone give me a hint on this?
(note: i've checked the manual page which describes it as
a resemblance of MS Windows text selection
but i still cannot quite understand why do we need any mouse actions in vim)
Select-mode is commonly used in snippet plugins such as vim-snipmate. Mappings can be created that are unique to select-mode so as not to interfere with regular visual mode behaviour.
Here is an excerpt from Practical Vim by Drew Neil:
If you are happy to embrace the modal nature of Vim, then you should
find little use for Select mode, which holds the hand of users who
want to make Vim behave more like other text editors. I can think of
only one place where I consistently use Select mode: when using a
plugin that emulates TextMate's snippet functionality, Select mode
highlights the active placeholder.
As the documentation suggests, select mode is a bit different from visual mode. Here's the commands you can do in it:
Commands in Select mode:
- Printable characters, <NL> and <CR> cause the selection to be deleted, and
Vim enters Insert mode. The typed character is inserted.
- Non-printable movement commands, with the Shift key pressed, extend the
selection. 'keymodel' must include "startsel".
- Non-printable movement commands, with the Shift key NOT pressed, stop Select
mode. 'keymodel' must include "stopsel".
- ESC stops Select mode.
- CTRL-O switches to Visual mode for the duration of one command. *v_CTRL-O*
- CTRL-G switches to Visual mode.
Otherwise, typed characters are handled as in Visual mode.
When using an operator in Select mode, and the selection is linewise, the
selected lines are operated upon, but like in characterwise selection. For
example, when a whole line is deleted, it can later be pasted halfway a line.
You can see the docs here.
What they mean by "resembles MS Windows selection" is probably that you can extend the selection with Shift+Arrows, and also that any printable characters entered will substitute the selected text and enter insert mode.
Also, see this question/answer at the vi.SE.
I'm posting this question largely to provide the answer I've arrived at (because I found nothing elsewhere online and see no questions asking how to do this), to hopefully save future LightTable vim users a bit of time. But I'd also like to hear about any other solutions people have found to this problem, or vim LightTable problems in general.
I've fallen in love with LightTable, but at least minimal vim support is a must before I even consider an IDE. LightTable has that. Currently, though, you're largely stuck with the default vim options and little ability to alter configuration. I would be very interested in hearing about what the future plans are in this area (you out there Chris?). Exposing a .vimrc in a local config directory, even if highly limited in functionality, would be simply awesome, but I realize its very early yet in development and largely depends on what CodeMirror can provide.
One thing I can't tolerate is having to send my pinky way up and to the left to hit the ESC key to exit insert mode. That is way too slow and requires your left fingers to leave the home row, which is never good. The way I normally handle this in vim is to map ii to exit insert mode in .vimrc. Another alternative that is there by default is to hit CTRL-[. That's better, but to me that's entering emacs chording territory and for some reason my right pinky finger almost always flubs hitting either of the bracket keys.
This is a bit of hack, but it's a tolerable work-around until better vim support comes along in LightTable/CodeMirror. I've only tested it on the latest LightTable (0.4.9), so I'm not sure how applicable it is to earlier versions (which you probably shouldn't be on anyways), or, for that matter, later versions that will come along.
There is a command option called "Vim: toggle vim mode". This turns vim on and off in an editor (or instarepl). You can bind this command to a hot-key combination via the "Settings: Change key bindings/shortcuts" command. This will open up a new tab where you can enter new key bindings on the left. The current key bindings are shown on the right.
I use SHIFT-i, within a context of :editor.keys.normal. (This means I can't use capital "I" directly in the text, but in actual practice with program editing - especially clojure - this almost never causes a problem, and if it does you can just use lower-case i and then back up and do a replace char.) This effectively makes "II" (SHIFT-i SHIFT-i) the means of exiting insert mode. The first SHIFT-i exits vim and puts you in the normal, WYSIWYG editor. The next SHIFT-i puts you back in vim, but in command mode. Voila! You've went from vim insert mode to vim command mode.
Hope this helps other LightTable vim users.
Update: I think the latest LightTable release supports this. Someone please comment if adding the following to their user.behaviors file works (user behaviors is accessible via the command pane (ctrl-space)):
[:editor :lt.plugins.vim/set-options {"enableInsertModeEscKeys" true,
"insertModeEscKeys" "jk",
"insertModeEscKeysTimeout" 200}]
Old answer:
The latest LT plugin source supports this, but has not been released yet.
To easily install it do the following:
Open your LT plugins folder, e.g. on OSX ~/Library/Application Support/LightTable/plugins/Vim/
(Optional) Save a backup of the Vim (plugin) folder somewhere else
Delete the Vim folder
Download https://github.com/LightTable/Vim/archive/master.zip
Unzip it, rename the unzipped folder to just Vim, and move/copy it to your LT Plugins folder (i.e. it is replacing the official Vim plugin that you just deleted)
Add the following options in the :editor section of your user.behaviors file:
(:lt.plugins.vim/set-options {"enableInsertModeEscKeys" true,
"insertModeEscKeys" "jk"
"insertModeEscKeysTimeout" 200})
Restart LT and you should be able to use jk (or whatever keys you set in insertModeEscKeys) to exit insert mode
CodeMirror's API is designed in such a way that it's not very complicated to add key bindings but adding support for a configuration file and extending the default key bindings to cover a larger part of Vim's feature set doesn't exactly sound like a trivial task to me. And, considering the fact that LT doesn't even have search/replace, probably something that is near the bottom of their TODO list.
That, and CodeMirror is a third party "library" on which the LT team probably doesn't have much leverage.