I regularly have to program small applications for several very specific situations.
My mother language is Dutch so I define my variables in Dutch.
When I write this programs I try to use VIM.
In most of my programs I use the same syntax, so I wanted to make my own auto complete library. But because I have to switch regularly between language (from lisp to latex for example). Specifically I want to be able to load a library after I started vim.
I don't have a clue about how this library should look, but the easiest thing I could come up with is a word on every line.
set complete+=k
set dict+=~/path/to/dict
The cool thing about VIM is autocomplete happens from any open buffer. In my opinion, you can load an "autocomplete file" in a buffer, then open your source file that you're going to work on, which will open in in another buffer, and you will get all your autocomplete goodness. This will allow you to open and close whatever buffers you want autocomplete to recognize. Effectively customizing your autocomplete for that particular session.
Related
I typically use an ide for large projects and vi for small single file scripts temporary files etc.
Lately I have heard of people using vi for larger projects too - actually, quite defensive and particular proud to do so.
I have tried, but i found it very cumbersome. Do any other programmers here use vi for and medium - large projects? If so, are there any tips/tricks you can offer for navigating source, looking at multiple files etc?
I have tried using tmux to see if it made things easier - but it still felt quite cumbersome
There is no magical tool that can make everything perfect. Vim is an editor, and it's pretty good at it, but it's not and will never be an IDE.
There used to be the pida project that made an IDE around vim, for better interaction when using python, but it got abandonned.
There is eclim which is a really neat tool that can use eclipse as a backend IDE accessible in a few keystrokes from within vim, while having all the power of eclipse for tagging, refactoring, debugging etc.. But you have to want running eclipse in background, which is like hiding an elephant under the carpet...
There are many little plugins you may want to use, and I'm pretty sure everyone has his favorite set of plugins, that helps navigate easily in the code and help tagging (like fugitive, nerdtree, etc..)
Finally, there is vim, a shell and that's all. Vim does a lot of things correctly, like navigating in the source, launching compilations and parsing the errors etc.. And for what vim is not good at, you can use your shell, to execute, to do git stuff, to open more vim windows to edit code..
Anyway, there's no perfect answer to your question, and I bet your question will be closed because of being "non constructive".
What do you find cumbersome? What works for you? What doesn't? What kind of feature do you need to be able to work efficiently with multiple files? How many are multiple files anyway?
Some people use Vim for working on quite large projects: the Linux kernel, Firefox, Vim itself… I guess that you need to know Vim pretty well to pull that off but it's all very doable, even without many plugins.
But I tend to think "complexity" rather than "quantity".
When I work with "complex" languages+projects (quotes because it is all very subjective) I'll use a more suited IDE with a Vim-emulation plugin: Flash Builder+Vrapper for Actionscript 3, Eclipse+Vrapper (then) Android Studio+IdeaVim (now) for Android.
When I work with "simple" (quotes, again) languages+projects I'll use Vim: that's any project involving HTML/CSS/JavaScript/PHP, from 3 to 50+ files.
File/buffer navigation
Vim is very good at opening files (which sounds funny), even without plugins. :sp **/foo<Tab>, for example, is quick and easy. :Ex foo/bar as well.
Switching buffers is also very easy, if a bit awkward at first. :bn, :bN and :b <Tab> will get you a long way.
And if you don't like those built-in methods, you can create your own cool mappings or choose from many plugins.
"Semantic" navigation
I like to think about my project in class/method names rather than in file names. With an up-to-date tags file (generated with ctags or some compatible program), :tag foo is a very efficient way to move around, <C-]> jumps to the definition of the tag under the cursor and <C-w>} opens that definition in a small preview window. That's more than enough for my needs.
I don't particularly like them but you can also use TagBar or TagList to have something that resembles the class browser of your IDE.
I'd suggest you make your needs more clear and ask more specific questions or look around on SO. The subjects above are pretty well covered.
Just a few pointers: I like NERDTree and CtrlP for easy/powerful file navigation and splits for keeping several files visable and navigatable at the same time.
I've been using Vim for a while now and love it, but one thing I've noticed when I use other editors is that I've never really got autocomplete working with much efficiency. I have supertab & snipmate working, I have tags for whatever language I'm using set up, but somehow it seems a little too cumbersome to use all that much, and apart from long method names I typically just avoid autocomplete.
Does anyone have fast, comprehensive autocomplete funcitonality set up in vim? Specifically:
At the moment, I hit "tab" to autocomplete class/method/variable names & generate snippets, but Ctrl+X+O for inbuilt langauge commands. I'd rather press tab for everything.
The ordering doesn't seem to be too intelligent. Very common stuff is often hidden in the middle of a bunch of rarely-used commands.
I've set up autocomplpop to show potential autocompletes as I'm typing, but I have to hit tab twice to accept the first entry. One much rather single-tab it.
So, any tips on setting up an efficient, comprehensive autocomplete configuration in vim? I know this question is a little vague - but if anyone has an overview of how they autocomplete well, and/or a link to a guide, it would be much appreciated.
Just thought I'd come back and mention that I finally found something I like: A customised version of NeoComplCache. Nice auto popup, everything integrated pleasantly into 'tab', and with a bit of customisation plays nice with snippets.
http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2620
This is very dependant on your working domain. Vim is a text editor with the ability to interface with intelligent text-aware mechanisms.
If you are using java there is eclim, which is the eclipse backend together with a vim plugin for the frontend.
For C or C++ there is the plugin OmniCppComplete
It works by scanning the headers in the paths you have set up in vim (see :h path), and works very well imo.
If you have to press Ctrl-X_Ctrl-O for omnicompleteion, then your supertab config seems a bit broken. It should try omni or filename completion first, and then fall back to word completion.
YouCompleteMe plugin by Valloric is a very decent plugins for autocomplete and suggestion.
It contains support for all the major languages and you can extend the feature with setting up different engine .
it also comes with syntax checker so u don't have to use Syntastic separately
For setup details visit this link
https://github.com/Valloric/YouCompleteMe
Any advice on how you would interface texshop on mac osx with vim? I'm using vim quite a lot lately for coding. I find myself now trying to use vim-commands (replace, search, pattern matching, move, etc) when writing documents for latex with texshop and they obviously don't work. However, I don't want to leave texshop altogether, because it has some pretty nice tools I use very often (maybe the most important one is the ability to click the compliled .pdf file while pressing the CMD key on my macbook to jump immediately to the corresponding place in the .tex file).
Thanks in advance!
Can't really help with the question but if you want to use vim I would highly recommend vim-latex suite. It has a lot of mappings and other latex goodness including completion of references/citations (it loads them from the bib file and gives prompts based on what you've already typed). Also it supports pdfsync forward/backward searching - I use that with Skim. There is some information here on how to get that working (and see other posts on that blog).
Are there any other texshop features you would like to reproduce in Vim?
Can VIM do auto code completion like what Eclipse does? Usually I connect to my Linux developing server through Putty from my Windows laptop. So, I hope I can find a plugin for VIM which can do drop-down menu like auto completion when I can type variable names in Putty, is this possible?
Thanks!
Yes, in a sense - Vim has Completion commands that can help you automatically find the completion text for partial variable names.
In a nutshell, type a partial variable name and then press CtrlP to search for a matching name.
Yes, it's possible. Vim already features that general style of code completion built-in, under the name of Omni completion.
The default installation doesn't allow for auto-invocation, but if you install this script, that allows it to happen.
Note that, depending on the language you'll be working with, you may need additional scripts to handle auto-completion for that language, and may even need to change the auto-invoke script to recognize when to invoke the completion. Since you haven't said what programming language you'll want to work with, it's a bit hard to say if you need more than this, but I recommend checking the help file.
Try to use http://eclim.org/ - using eclipse core with VIM via plugins.
To not start the complete ecplise core but have a C/C++ member completion, try
http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1520
- Complete namespaces, classes, structs and union members.
- Complete inherited members for classes and structs
(single and multiple inheritance).
- Complete attribute members eg: myObject->_child->_child etc...
Currently vim has no of plugins for the auto code completion feature, I am using youcompleteme plugin, combined with vim-snippets, ultisnips and supertab plugins. You can tab complete the code using snippets (a small text which can be expanded for full code), and a large number of languages are supported.
For simple text files also a drop down menu comes for the words you have typed earlier.
Are there any rich-text editors that have Vi(m) keybindings? Specifically, something like Word where I can compose a document with colors, headings, et al. but use Vi(m) bindings to move around and compose?
So if you have to use MS Word and want vim key bindings, there is an add on, but if you are not bound to that I would def. go for LaTeX + the vim latex suite.
Are you familiar with Latex?
Simply put it allows you to format your documents in plain text using tags or commands.
You then "compile" your document into the final format .pdf,.ps, etc.
Ex:
\documentclass{article}
\title{Cartesian closed categories and the price of eggs}
\author{Jane Doe}
\date{September 1994}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
Hello world!
\end{document}
This will allow you to write in vim, but still get professional non plain text output for your documents.
If you like Markdown or Latex, you could use the free open source Rstudio editor, with VIM-mode enabled. Export as either Word, PDF, or HTML etc.
Download Rstudio:
https://www.rstudio.com/products/RStudio/#Desktop
Read about markdown:
http://rmarkdown.rstudio.com/
If you wish to use vim for text editing, but want to, for example have text in different colors, bold it and such ... you can use Txtfmt plugin. It enables you, by using special characters, to "prettify" plain text files a little. They can look quite nice, and it comes handy if you're used to vim, and are, for example, writing documentation for your programs which you'll later just get in word, and make an adjustment or two, and ship off.
If you want to (or have to) stay with Word and don't want to shell out $100 for a ViEmu license, you can try using this AutoHotKey script for providing some basic vi-like functionality. The repo linked also provides a standalone exe to get the same without using AutoHotKey.
There are many good reasons to ditch word entirely, but sometimes that's just not an option :(
The Txtfmt plugin definitely provides the functionality you are looking for. It's a bit like having "rich text" capability for plain text in Vim.
Txtfmt (The Vim Highlighter)
Screenshots
The latest version supports 8 configurable foreground and background colors, as well as all combinations of bold, underline, italic, etc... The highlighting is token-based, but the tokens are rendered invisible by the syntax, and can be inserted with very convenient and intuitive mappings, which don't require you to remember anything: e.g., "bold-underline" could be specified with a string such as bu or ub. The version under development even supports visual maps, which will permit you to select some text and say (for example) "Make this text red, bold-italic", and have the plugin handle insertion/removal of the appropriate tokens automatically. (It's really quite simple and intuitive, however, even with the non-visual mappings.)
Although the plugin is highly configurable, the default settings are appropriate for most users, and the author is more than happy to answer any setup or usage questions...
There's a way of configuring Abiword to use vi key bindings
You can use the text editor of your choice with vim keys (vim, emacs, sublime, atom, vscode ,etc.) and write your document in markdown. Then use an open source tool called pandoc to translate it into almost any other markup language that you want. It is possible to compile your document to rich text formats including MS Word or even MS Powerpoint.
You can costumize your output by using a template.
Pandoc has extensive documentation and uses a richer markup syntax that allows you to do pretty much anything you want with the text. It is being actively developed by the community. Almost any major text editor has a few plugins for pandoc too.
You can use GlobalVim.
It can simulate vim modes and commands in most editing area.