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A Visual Walkthrough of New Features in Vim 7.0
An anonymous reader writes "Anybody who has used Linux or any other OS would be aware of the very powerful and feature rich text editor Vi. This interesting article takes a visual look at some of the new features in the latest version of Vim 7.0 — a Vi clone created by Bram Moolenaar. From the article: 'Just for once, I wouldn't mind siding with the beast if that is what it takes to use Vi. The modern avatar of Vi is Vim — the free editor created by Bram Moolenaar. Riding from strength to strength, this editor in its 7th version is a powerhouse as far as an editor is concerned. When ever I use Vim (or GVim for that matter), it gives me the impression of the Beauty and the Beast.'"
Presumably hjkl are much more reliably next to each other than jkl;?
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
So maybe you could try reducing your dependency on IDEs.
Open a terminal and stick with it.
Symlink eclipse to vi.
That is perhaps the worst bit of advise I have seen so far. If they have a job to do, then they should not switch away from what gets the job done quickest for them. A far better bit of advise is to use vi for when the IDE does not help. Such as quick edits, shell script editing or config file changing. That way they still can get their job done in a reasonable amount of time but still get to use vi on a regular basis.
In vim, Ctl+End does go to the end of the document. All of the other arrow key motions work like you would expect as well.
It starts in command mode probably because you almost always need to move the cursor before you resume editing a file. Command mode gives you dozens of powerful commands to navigate to where you need to go in a couple of keystrokes instead of just banging on the arrow and Pgup/Pgdn keys like a monkey with RSI.
Basically vi was designed for 24x80 CRT screens of which the ADM3 and the VT100 became the most popular although this depends who you talk to. On an ADM3 the HJKL key actually had the Left, Down, Up and Right arrow keys printed on them hence the convention. I do actually surprise my colleagues by using the basic keyboard (ie. no function or cursor keys) but I have a background of using so many different keyboards (including teletypes) that it is much faster for me to do this.
By using "cursors" it was possible to write a termcap (BSD) or terminfo (SYS V) that would allow the user of vi to use function and arrow keys. This is true even today and is usable by vim or even gvim which is really a vi type window which has graphical capability (ie. mouse) so that you can use the old tty commands and/or mouse.
There are always advantages and disadvantages in using a GUI or keyboard commands and vim/gvim does give many options. In fact I do find that if you know vi you basically know vim and can very easily use gvim.
I know many people like Emacs but now is not the time for religious wars like those of the mid 1980's. When people ask me which editor to use I first ask them what they want to do and then outline the pluses and minuses of vi vs emacs (if installed) vs pico (if installed). IMHO I think the best way to describe the editors is:
vi - excellent general purpose editor (a must if you are a System Admin)
emacs - very powerful editor but requires devotion to learn properly but well worth it.
pico - great cut-down emacs editor (low learning curve) for people who just want to type something.
If you are a Unix System Admin you will find that sometimes you may need to learn "ed" which to many may seem a strange thing to say today but believe me it is important that you know some of the basics of this line editor. I have even seen people use "ed" as their default editor and use it surprisingly quickly and efficiently.
My apologies to those people who are going to say "what about XXXX" (insert for favorate editor here). If you look at *nix editors you are always guaranteed to have "vi", "ed" and possibly "emacs" all the others are basically add-on's although with Linux you do get "vim" which you can call with "vi".
Learning "vi" is not as complex as learning "emacs" (not to say don't learn, but the learning curve is steeper) and it is surprisingly easy once you come to grips with the short cuts and how they relate to each other. Examples: [b]ack (word back), [w]ord (word forward), [e]nd (end of word). Also remember upper case is usually the reverse of what you did with the lower case command. There are some excellent books/papers you can get from Google. I find the best way to learn something is to have some serious editing then use the editor you want to learn.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
I use both Vim and Emacs, and both have advantages.
Emacs: You can run a shell-like process inside the editor, which leads to really, really cool things like editing code in one buffer, and then sending that code into a running interpretor in another buffer. This allows something like "visual" debugging, only in a proper editor.
Vim: If you know how to touch-type, vim just has the most comfortable (in terms of avoiding things like repetitive strain injury) keyboard layout. It really beats stupid CTRL- or META- something combinations, which can give you pains in your wrists if you use them a lot.
Anyway, enough objectivity. Flame on!
Meanwhile, a real woman just goes and manually does whatever it is her husband's silly "program" was supposed to do.
There are two types of people.
1) Those who can think very clearly and can write whatever they need to in one go, without ever having to revise it.
2) Those who cannot write even a single line without needing to use the delete feature 10 times.
For the type 2) people vi is not a useable editor. At least not for anything that requires writing more than a couple of lines. I unfortunately am a type 2) person and have to live with emacs. IOW vi is for perfect people, and I am actually a blathering idiot when it comes to typing in my thoughts or code.
I still use vi quite a lot, for quick editing. But if I have to write more than a couple of lines then I start searching for emacs.
I am quite used to the two editors. Since when you are within emacs you can do almost anything, there is very little motivation to learn another editor. This is why I hate having to use any other program that tries to make me learn its editor, and does not provide emacs key bindings.
It is good that some of the emacs key bindings are used in many editors like the firefox input box.
I agree that knowledge of classes in your application is a good thing. However the following "features" of Visual Studio .net 2003 are "bad" things:
- automatic removal of wired up events from your code when it encounters certain problems (designer loaded without a proper compile, and sometimes just plain random)
- reformatting of HTML code (muffled scream) even when you turn off all reformatting code
I could go on and on with problems of Visual Studio which you wouldn't see unless you're working on a BIG application. VI shouldn't be used as a substitute for Visual Studio, I agree. But it Should be used as an editor inside Visual Studio. As far as laying out code, there's nothing better than VI. It doesn't obfuscate code, a silly archaic programmer obfuscates code. VI is perfect for hardcore editing and when coupled with Visual Studio's intellisense and code generation tools, it kicks ass.