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Closed 11 years ago.
So a lot of my programmer buddies have urged me to switch from (g)vim to a "real" text editor like notepad++. My opinion has always been that they simply don't understand how to use vim. Lately, I've been hearing more and more people talking about notepad++ and I got to wondering... Does notepad++ actually have any features that Vim doesn't or vice versa? Nobody has actually been able to give me any legitimate reason to make the switch other than that they like it more. What are your thoughts?
Don't let the peer pressure get to you. They're just jealous because they can't delete a line with two keystrokes.
Vim is just as much of a text editor as Notepad++. You can mod vim to have colors, tabs, basically everything that Notepad++ has and so much more.
Vim is about touch typist shortcuts. Notepad++ is a usual text editor. I have been using vim for years now and I would not trade it for Notepad++. However, to a new user its definitively easier to use Notepad++ than vim. Vim has a very bad learning curve.
Vim has modal editing (answering the vice versa part). And it runs in a terminal. You are likely correct; if "vim" isn't a real text editor, I'm not sure what is. I guess ed, the standard Unix text editor, would be the only real one.
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Closed 9 years ago.
Does anyone use the h,j,k,l keys on Vim with a MacBook Pro. I find this quite difficult as they are far from the Enter key, which is used a lot.
I know that navigating Vim should be done in a more efficient way (/, ?, easymotion, etc.), but for near moves, the arrows are useful.
I know many people use the h,j,k,l to be closer to the home row, but these gets my hand far away from the Enter key, which I find uncomfortable.
In the context of Vim, your question doesn't make sense. The hjkl motions (apart from the fact that you should prefer more precise motions like w, W, f{char}) are used in normal mode, whereas Enter is mostly used in insert mode and to conclude command-line mode. (There is a <CR> normal-mode command, but it's rather obscure.)
Don't navigate in insert mode! Instead, go back to normal mode with <Esc>.
As a beginner, especially when you come from another editor, don't succumb to the initial urge to remap the Vim commands. They are there for a reason, though it takes some time to get used to them and discover their magic. (You can google for articles that describe Vim's command structure and its grammar-like use, e.g. here.)
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Closed 10 years ago.
I am curious to know why vi(m) has never gone ahead and integrated cscope style database into it.
When it comes to working with Linux Kernel code navigation I find
vim + ctags + cscope
is a must. And although ctags and vim do work as one cscope still doesn't.
Recently I read this an interview article on www.Linux.com on Brtfs maintainer Chris Mason. And he mentions how it would be much better if cscope were integrated into vim and knowing the benefits of it I second that statement.
My question here is why isn't it done yet? If anyone has ever tried doing so, what difficulties are faced that leads to abandoning the task?
Personally if and when time permits I would like to dig into it myself. But any background information will definitely help.
Thanks!
Well, cscope is integrated into Vim, see :help :cscope. Similar to ctags, Vim will invoke the external tool and parse its output. As with ctags, this gives you a set of commands to query its database. This may be already enough for you, or you'll use a plugin to make the handling easier to use. (For example, I use easytags.vim to automatically update the ctags database; there may be similar plugins for cscope.)
In case you're talking about including the full cscope functionality directly into Vim, that's against the design guidelines of Vim as a general-purpose tool; after all, cscope is a tool with a quite limited scope (no pun intended) of programming languages. In my opinion, the inclusion of a special command and parser inside Vim is already quite something. But you may search the vim_dev mailing list for discussions around cscope, or directly ask there for the reasons of the current cscope integration level, or ultimately propose a patch to change it.
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Closed 11 years ago.
EDIT:
1. Let's not make this a general vim/emacs debate. I know some people prefer standard emacs, I want a modal input system.
2. When I say Vim emulation, I mean something like http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Evil or http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Vimpulse
I edit a lot of text (as in notes, mail etc.), I want to do it as quickly as possible. It seems like a good idea to learn how to use something more complicated than text edit. Is there any significant difference between the potential speed of an experienced user of either vim or vim emulation X in emacs?
I suggest you pick one of them (VIM/emacs), mixing them (with a plugin) isn't something that great since I wouldn't expect all the functionality to be there.
Besides that, I don't see any reason why you would need such a thing. VIM or Emacs are pretty fast without one emulating the other, so you wouldn't need such a plugin.
If you really want to be extra fast, I know VIM has a really nice plugin called EasyMotion (watch a quick video of it in action from nettuts).
Edit: #Daimrod said Emacs has a similar plugin called ace-jump-mode
Go for Emacs. You'll have the VIM keys if you prefer that and you'll also have the power of Emacs at your disposal.
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Closed 11 years ago.
I've not used VIM as an editor before, but I'm curious about it and about why people use command-line tools like VIM and GDB. I'm curious to know whether people think it's better than tools like Visual Studio.
Could people who do use it share it's best features? This might increase my motivation to learn it. The first IDE I ever used as a kid was Visual Basic. I'm curious to know whether people who use VIM now used it when they first stared using computers?
Many people use vim as an IDE. There are a large set of scripts to add IDE like functionality, and you can create your own scripts too.
People also really like the way you can minimize keystrokes and avoid the mouse. So much, in fact, that things like http://vimgolf.com/ exist to see how few keystrokes you can use to do some sort of edit.
Vim is terse, concise, and optimized for people with only two hands.
(Deleted the "vi is not an IDE" - don't want to start an editor war)
You will find a vi clone on virtually every Unix/Linux system out there - so being comfortable with using vi is a useful skill - the Mac includes a vi clone too.
Its not so useful on Windows as its not there by default - but Notepad whilst awful is a passable editor in an emergency. I wouldn't install vim on Windows to have a decent editor, I would either use Visual Studio if installed or install Notepad++
And yes, vi was the first editor I learned to use - but I would normally use a decent IDE, but knowing basic vi commands is useful.
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Closed 9 years ago.
Another question asked why there are so few non-vi modal editors. A few of the comments in that question mentioned other modal editors in passing, but I think that it would be useful to develop a more comprehensive list. Searching for this information on Google is difficult, as vim-related information tends to drown out everything else.
A few items to get things rolling:
Divascheme (From the previously mentioned question)
Ed (According to this)
There have been many Non-vi modal editors over the years. Many of them tied to a single operating system.
WordStar, edlin, and ISPF come to mind. Also EDIT from the HDOS system. There are probably at least a dozen others named EDIT or it's variants.
I've never tried it, but AFAIK Emacs has a plugin to emulate vi's modal editing.
Elvis is one of these editors.
Also, nvi could count as one.