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.)
Related
I recently did a new install of VIM 8.2.2825 on Windows. The behavior of <operator>%, such as d% or c% appears to have changed, compared to how I have used those commands for many years. These operations are now "exclusive", meaning they do not include the final paren or brace in the text that you want to delete or change.
The documentation still claims that the <op>% operation is inclusive. (see the beginning of section 9 (various motions) in :help motion.txt). But that's not happening. If the cursor is on the left paren and I type d%, it now deletes everything before the right paren, but not the right paren. It should include deleting the right paren.
I searched quite a while looking for anything related to the inclusivity / exclusivity of the d% operation, with no luck. Apologies if I missed something.
I'm wondering if this really is a change in VIM behavior (in which case the documentation seems to be wrong), or if perhaps there is some .vimrc setting that I now need, that wasn't needed before.
TIA.
You're probably using :h matchit standard plugin that re-maps %. In fact, it does not necessarily make the motion exclusive, it just uses Visual mode that depends on your :h 'selection' setting.
Just don't load it if you don't like it.
Can't seem to find any reason for this, but I have been using Ycm, syntastic, and all the lh- plugins with vim for a while now. In the case of lh-brackets, I used to have a problem with it generating "«»" every time it 'automatically' generated the other bracket, paren, quote, etc. But it was only happening in .vim files, so i turned it off for vim files in my vimrc. Now nothing has changed, no new scripts installed, and all of the sudden, this happens with ALL files (cpp, h, pl, py, etc). Like i said, not using heavy customization, and everything is default except the disabling of lh-brackets when editing vim files, but that has now become a hotkey since i cant use it anywhere.
My Question is this: does anyone have this or similar problem with lh-brackets, and if so, any idea how to fix it, or is there some setting I am missing?
My first thoughts are to go though and check any updated vim scripts (this just happened a day ago) that could have been updated when doing an apt-get upgrade (like debian.vim) but after that I've got nothing...
The placeholders characters can be jumped to (:h <Plug>MarkersJumpF -> <C-J> with vim, <m-ins> with gvim). That's their purpose.
If you have installed lh-cpp, see :h lh-cpp-first-steps, you'll find a quick guide to my C++ suite (and lh-brackets incidentally).
EDIT: The plugin was badly designed. I've patched the plugin to rely on g:usemarks in order to fix the ergonomic of plugin .
In the (now-) past, if you wanted to set b:usemarks to 0, you'd have needed to add an autocommand that'd set b:usemarks to 0 in all new buffers.
Now, (lh-brackets v2.2.0), if you want to always disable the placeholders/marker characters, you need to set g:usemarks to 0, not b:usemarks. Buffer-local variables are meant to be set from ftplugins, or tree/project-local plugins which are supported thanks to plugins like local_vimrc.
And as romainl has pointed out, don't hesitate to use the bug trackers, or even to contact me.
hmm found it:
:let b:usemarks=0
now needs to be set, apparently that was a marker for integration to another plugin, though i dont use it.
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.
The question is self explanatory, but I haven't found a single resource that explains what the difference is after an hour of searching. After poking around a little bit in both, it appears that gVim and gVim easy are identical.
Gvim easy is started and locked in insert-mode (every character you type is printed like a simple notepad).
Standard gvim starts in normal mode and you have to toggle between normal/insert like all other vim.
From help:
Easy mode. Implied for |evim| and |eview|. Starts with
'insertmode' set and behaves like a click-and-type editor.
This sources the script $VIMRUNTIME/evim.vim. Mappings are
set up to work like most click-and-type editors, see
|evim-keys|. The GUI is started when available.
{not in Vi}
gVim-Easy, which is installed with gVim, has all the functionality of
normal gVim but lacks modes. This is especially useful for begginers
and people who do not want to, or do not have the time to, learn how
to use gVim. Users can benefit from gVim's superior syntax
highlighting and auto-indentation while not having to have to learn
the, often deemed complex, command set of gVim in order to edit a
simple document. It is recommended that readers of this tutorial at
least try to learn how to use gVim in normal mode, the learning curve
is steep, but, the benefits in speed and usability this confers is
worth the investment.
Read here
gVim Easy: gvim.exe -y (pass a parameter y)
gVim: gvim.exe
It seems that Insert and Replace are available modes, and command mode is missing. And at first glance it appears to have lost the ability to save a document using keystrokes - the File menu shows only ":w" for Save and without command mode, the command simply isn't there. What isn't shown however is Alt-F followed by S - this works, although also missing is the status line confirmation of the file being written.
There are important features of Emacs which are missing in Vim, such as the comint mode, and there are no scripts/plugins which can replace them.
There are also benefits of Vim over Emacs, such as modal editing and generally better default shortcuts. However, Viper mode gets me both. Vimpulse also enables visual mode.
Unfortunately, no mode can make Emacs work as fast as Vim.
So I mostly learned Vim-in-Emacs. What Vim features am I missing?
I'm a regular vim user but not an emacs user and haven't used vimpulse to confirm this.
But browsing the vimpulse code below I see no mention of text objects.
http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/vimpulse.el
Vim introduced some very useful idioms for selection and movement that aren't in regular vi
cat 'cut around tag' for xml/html tags
diw 'delete in word'
di( di" delete text within a "" () etc.
in the vim help see :he text-objects for more.
Unfortunately, no mode can make Emacs work as fast as Vim.
If you mean that the emacs startup time is poor, you can cut it down dramatically by having an emacs session permanently open, and use gnuclient/emacsclient whenever you need to edit a file.
http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GnuClient
One vi feature that I miss in emacs is the . (dot) command that repeats the last edit. There is dot-mode.el which implements C-. to simulate this but it didn't always work for me (I am not proficient in elisp to figure out why).
Even viper doesn't implement this command exactly like vi does (last time I checked), and even if it does, I don't think that is enough for me to start using viper.
To get a complete list of what vimpulse may be missing type
:helpgrep not in Vi
Every feature in the help that is not vi compatible will be listed.
Theres about 700 matches.
Of course there will be a lot of duplicated functionality
Vi motion everywhere - in Vi you can always navigate using the same shortcuts, whether you are inside a directory listing, a help file, a write only file or something you're allowed to edit.
Correct visual and delete behaviour - very similar to emacs marking but idiomatically different, so difficult for a Vi user to retrain. If you're already used to the emacs marking you're not really missing anything.
Correct escape behaviour - should cancel all other modal activity and return you to command mode. Again, if you're comfortable in emacs you're probably used to having modal inputs and such anyway.
The obvious chestnuts about Vi being deployed on every nix system in the world (Gentoo purists correct me?) - not a very strong argument in my eyes anyway.
Those are the ones that sprang out during my use of emacs+viper.
Vim macros don't seem to work with viper/vimpulse:
Vim macros don't work when using viper + vimpulse in Emacs
(Btw, the killer emacs feature that makes me care about vim/vimpulse is that different frames can edit the same file. It's like having a split where the two pieces can be in different windows. If anyone knows how to accomplish that in vim, you'd be my hero.)
Incremental search using / and ? is missing.
Being a lover of emacs as an OS and vi as an input model, naturally I wanted to love viper. However within two seconds of using it I had to give it up: viper does not support C-[ as a substitute for the escape key–which is an essential shortcut for the most frequently used command in vi.