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I am new to Vim and after using it for about 3 days i am in love with it. I used sublime-text before this and i decided to try vim because i heard a lot of people (maybe some) hate and love it. I know that learning Vim require time investment + patience but for the basic shortcut and command I am okay preety smooth but when i reach the .vimrc configuration I start to feel frustrated and 'uhhh'. Overall I like the way how the work-flow goes and in the past 3 days i manage to implement the basic shortcut.
I watched and read a lot of tutorial, and most of it asked us to find "someones .vimrc configuration and use it". I searched at Google 'vim .vimrc', I found 2 links from Github and I am amazed with all the massive lines and I was like 'What! How am i going to understand what each of this line for!' :/ i tried to search all the 'set' and the basic config but i am not happy without knowing what each of the line does. Please if anyone here can help me or explain how the configuration works. I tried the :help and there were about 8000 lines .>< for now i am using the https://github.com/tpope/vim-sensible Vim-Sensible and i am hoping to know how it work. Thanks guys.
For plugin, I think it's fine for now.
What you see in people's posted ~/.vimrc files either is:
the result of years of using and tweaking Vim; don't be intimitated, just start out small and it will grow automatically with your continues use (hopefully in a benign way). The mentioned vim-sensible plugin is a good way to start.
just copied from colleagues / somewhere on the net without real understanding; this is dangerous and best avoided. Vim "distributions" like spf-13 and Janus lure you with a quick install and out-of-the-box settings, but you pay the price with increased complexity (you need to understand both Vim's runtime loading scheme and the arbitrary conventions of the distribution) and inflexibility (the distribution may make some things easier, but other things very difficult). Vim is incredibly customizable, using someone else's customization makes no sense. Doubly so for canned, ready-made "distributions".
Yes, the built-in :help is large, but you don't need to read it in one go :-) It is excellent, too, and contains most of what you need - for years to come!
This article by Vim's creator explains the philosophy behind Vim very well (there's also a recorded talk): start small, using only basic commands (also taught by vimtutor), and gradually become a master of all kinds of text editing tasks!
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Years ago I was looking for a way to learn Vim that didn't involve a wall of text, or scrolling through vimtutor without knowing the commands to do so. I wondered if anything else existed for such a purpose.
I programmed a game just for this purpose! It's an online game where you move the cursor using vim commands and motions. Check it out on http://vim-adventures.com.
The first couple of levels teach hjkl and word navigation. The rest is planned to cost money.
Interactive tutorial:
http://www.openvim.com/
HJKL-learning game:
http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=3409
Screencasts:
http://derekwyatt.org/vim/tutorials/index.html
http://vimcasts.org
To answer your question: vimtutor is the good way to interactively learn vim. If you read through it, it gives you all the necessary commands to go through it, and you actually learn to use vim.
If that's too much effort, I really doubt vim is for you.
Old question, but for others looking for something similar that has not been mentioned: https://www.shortcutfoo.com/
http://kikuchiyos-vim-game.herokuapp.com
Spiked this mid 2011, around time vim adventures was made, but never went nearly as far as vim adventures did. Never got much play, but still a free alternative for anyone interested in getting over the vim learning curve - basic movement and changing modes.
haven't used it, but it looks close to what you're asking for
http://www.openvim.com/tutorial.html
For the very beginner http://vimsnake.com is also a nice one.
It will interestingly improves the muscle memory for keys h,j,k,l, esc and i
Now after getting prepared for those keys, we can move to http://www.vimgenius.com/ for learning. It is just similar and alternative for shortcutfoo.com and more it is vim specific.
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vim comes with a nice built-in interactive tutorial. You can access this tutorial by just running:
$ vimtutor
It is very easy to use because it creates working cases for basic commands. Is there a more advanced tutorial? Has any one thought to build one to help uses take their VIM skills to the next level? Most tutorial and cheat-sheet sites out there for vim only show commands but not necessarily specific uses and examples.
Is there an advanced tutorial out there?
Is this the type of project that could be an open source document that everyone can add examples to? Like a Vim Interactive Wiki or similar to the RegEx sites that have the built in regex testers.
It's not exactly a tutorial, but I've been impressed with #nelstrom's growing collection of screencasts at vimcasts.org:
http://vimcasts.org/episodes/archive
Each short video covers a single topic (or a small set of closely-related topics), and the ones I've watched have been informative and enjoyable. The author says that "the aim is to provide something in each episode that you can take away and use," and I'd say he's succeeding.
Try the interactive vim tutorial online here: http://www.openvim.com/tutorial.html
If you're interested in a game for Vim, there's Vim-Adventures. As of April 22, 2013, it has 12 levels and covers a wide berth of topics. If you like it, you can buy it. There is also VimGolf for sharpening very specific golfing skills. It's not useful on average, but take a look at some of the impressive entries.
I've been working on a more modern and interactive system for tutorials inside vim, vim-tutor-mode. The goal is to provide an updated tutorial for newcomers, and a way for third party developers to create tutorials for plugins. It currently has an updated version of vimtutor, and some more things.
Have you read the various stuff in :help? :help to get a general table of contents, :help usr_toc to access the table of contents of the User Manual -- chapters 20 through 32 of the user manual are on advanced editing topics, as is everything under the "Advanced Editing" heading in the main TOC. Chapters 40-44 of the manual discuss programming vim.
For those of you who prefer books I think Practical Vim: Edit Text at the Speed of Thought by Drew Neil does the perfect job as a continuation for vimtutor
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Basically, I really like vi[m]'s key-bindings, but not the rest of the editor. I really dislike emacs key-bindings, but like the rest of the editor.
viper-mode seems like the best of both worlds, but it's not perfect..
What vim features did you miss in emacs (and more importantly, how did you get them back)? What config-tweaks did you do to make viper-mode nicer to use?
As a start: I really missed vim's visual-selection mode.. vimpulse adds this to emacs!
As far as I know, VIM/VI has always had the :set nu feature to show line numbers along-side the lines themselves. By default, emacs only had line-number-mode which showed the line-number of the current line in the mode-line (not the same thing).
To fix that, I always found linum.el pretty useful. Starting with the upcoming emacs 23, the linum mode would be included in the standard distribution. But for emacs <= 22, one still needs to install it manually.
I also miss the incremental search with / and ? . Something like
what is posted here first in the TODO section.
http://common-lisp.net/project/vial/darcs/extended-viper/vimlike.el
If anyone can provide it, it would be great. Jurta ?
I would recommend you use my version of the emacs starter kit. It is totally customized for heavy (symbiotic) use of emacs and vi/vim (via viper and vimpulse) together.
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Are there any Vi clones that are still in wide use today (besides Viper mode in Emacs ;)), other than Vim? If so, what are the pros/cons to using it instead of Vim?
Kate (KDE Advanced Text Editor?) has a Vi editing mode.
It's not strictly a clone, but real live no-kidding vi is available open-source now. Also lots of sources and links to many versions on the vi-lovers page.
From the Vi Lovers Home Page - http://thomer.com/vi/vi.html#versions
I don't know what your requirements or expectations are, but Wikipedia has a great comparison page here that should help you figure out which version is best for you.
ActiveState Komodo has a vi mode too.
I use Vim for all my editing except when I use Visual Studio. Fortunately there's the ViEmu plug-in for Visual Studio. Unfortunately it is not free nor a complete Vim implementation, but it's not expensive either and it close enough for my needs.
Visual Slickedit ($$$) has a very nice VI emulation mode. Vslick has other features that make it quite nice as a programmers' editor (e.g., dynamic tag generation instead of having to re-run ctags).
QT Creator has 'fake vim' mode.
VILE
Sublime text has a 'Vintage' mode which replicates many vi/m commands.
I used the vi-plugin in Eclipse a while and it is quite good. But since my colleagues don't have a clue about vi they ran in to problems when they were trying to edit on my workstation.
I used to use elvis to satisfy my enhanced-vi needs, but can't really offer a comparison (other than that both are very good) because I switched to vim a couple years back for the sake of using something that was easier to find support for (if only because it's what everyone else uses).
I often use nvi when I want a stripped down version of vi.
Not any real pros of using it instead of vim. More lightweight and doesn't load all the plugins I have with vim.
Vim still has lot more features (tabs, plugins, better multi-buffer support...).
Yzis
The main website http://www.yzis.org/ is no longer functional. However, the source code can still be found on GitHub: https://github.com/chrizel/Yzis
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How can I improve the look and feel of my Linux desktop to suit my programming needs?
I found Compiz and it makes switching between my workspaces (which is something I do all the time to make the most of my 13.3" screen laptop) easy and look great - so what else don't I know about that make my programming environment more productive/pleasing?
#Rob Cooper - thanks for the heads-up, hope this reword addresses the issues
I found that the best programming experience comes from having quick access all your tools. This means getting comfortable with basic command line acrobatics and really learning keyboard shortcuts, flags, and little productivity apps.
I find that most of my workflow comes down to just a few apps and commands:
Terminator
SVN commands - ci, co, status, log, etc.
Command Line FTP
Vim
Basic Command lines operations (cd, rm, mv, cp, touch, grep, and std i/o redirection comprise 80% of my work day)
Not to say that GUI apps aren't necessary. A few I use:
Diffmerge
RapidSVN
Filezilla
VirtualBox
GnomeDo (this really should be first)
When it comes down to it, the real improvement in programming experience comes from just that - programming experience. Just pick a set of tools and stick with them until you know them inside and out.
I've used by Ubuntu desktop for some coding sessions. I haven't settled on an IDE, but if I'm not using gedit, I'll use emacs as my editor. Sometimes I need to ssh to a remote server and edit from there, in which case emacs is preferred. I'm just not the vi(m) type.
Maybe I'll try out Eclipse one day...
I love Compiz, but it does nothing for my coding experience. It's just eye candy. You can do desktop switching and Alt-Tab just fine without it. Aside from that, Jeff Atwood's recommendations for good chair, multi-monitors, and simplistic background still apply for me.
If you have half decent 3D acceleration on board, CompizFusion adds attractive desktop effects like mapping your workspaces onto a cube using that to switch between them/move windows between them. Looks pretty and improves general usability - great!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compiz