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no more using screen and vim!

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I use Ctrl-n and Ctrl-p for next and previous tab.

Just add this to your<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.vimrc

nnoremap <silent> <C-n><nobr> <wbr></nobr>:tabnext<CR>

nnoremap <silent> <C-p><nobr> <wbr></nobr>:tabprevious<CR>

Enjoy!

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One good thing with tabs is that you can use windows inside tabs.

Simply use<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:split/:vsplit inside the tabs.

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I don't understand why the author or anyone would have multiple xterms with vim editing a single file in each one. Vim always allowed editing multiple files (previously known as buffers). So what do tabs do? To me they just provide a different interface to the multiple files that always existed. Don't get me wrong I'm not criticizing tabs. The "tabdo" command looks pretty slick.

mg

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I'd have to agree. Tabs look nice however this functionality has been around for quite some time (at least vim 5.x) you could split your buffer into however many files you wanted then use Ctl-WW and move between them nicely.
Vim and buffers and or the use of screen could easily have solved the authors delima far before the release of vim 7..

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ok, im trolling but constructively.

So, vim just made tabs? Tabs in text editors existed for over 5 years at least on the various editors I've been using on Windows. And why do I need to type all those ':tabXXX' kind of commands to just move in and out of tab and run a search?

What I do on Windows, I press 'Ctrl+h' and open search/replace window, directly type the strings in there without the '%s<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/' etc annoying symbols with quite many extra keystrokes with Ctrl and sounds more intuitive by just pressing a single sequence of shortcut to start typing the word you want to replace.

Also, I haven't felt either that with or without mouse is better for text editing, as I'd like to take some time to actually start typing my code after looking through at the various part of my code with my mouse wheel scrolling, instead of having the necessity to keep my hand on keyboard all the time for endless typing. I can help to have my hands to relax off keyboard from time to time.

All I wanted to say is... why is Vim so cheered? I've been editing code for nearly 8 years or so (and using Unix for about 5 years) while using vim here and there (I finally had a 2 weeks project entirely typed by vim recently) for a couple of years, but never ever really liked it, except that when editing config files on Unix, that's the best there is probably, because shell text editing won't allow a decent use of mouse through putty.

Ok. I'm only 25 years old and grew up starting from Windows while still using Windows as main machine, but I just find it odd that I never can like vim (or emacs for that matter) that if it's any better than Windows text editing with mouse.

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So, vim just made tabs? Tabs in text editors existed for over 5 years at least on the various editors I've been using on Windows. And why do I need to type all those ':tabXXX' kind of commands to just move in and out of tab and run a search?

What I do on Windows, I press 'Ctrl+h' and open search/replace window, directly type the strings in there without the '%s<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/' etc annoying symbols with quite many extra keystrokes with Ctrl and sounds more intuitive by just pressing a single sequence of shortcut to start typing the word you want to replace.

Also, I haven't felt either that with or without mouse is better for text editing, as I'd like to take some time to actually start typing my code after looking through at the various part of my code with my mouse wheel scrolling, instead of having the necessity to keep my hand on keyboard all the time for endless typing. I can help to have my hands to relax off keyboard from time to time.

All I wanted to say is... why is Vim so cheered? I've been editing code for nearly 8 years or so (and using Unix for about 5 years) while using vim here and there (I finally had a 2 weeks project entirely typed by vim recently) for a couple of years, but never ever really liked it, except that when editing config files on Unix, that's the best there is probably, because shell text editing won't allow a decent use of mouse through putty.

Ok. I'm only 25 years old and grew up starting from Windows while still using Windows as main machine, but I just find it odd that I never can like vim (or emacs for that matter) that if it's any better than Windows text editing with mouse.

Here is why Vim is "better"

What I want you to try and do in Word, Notepad, or Wordpad is this:

Replace every instance of a phone number in the format 555-555-5555 with (555)-555-5555 but keep the phone numbers intact (i.e. 555-555-5555 would be an actual number)

You will find that it is rather difficult to do. It gets even worse if you want to just do that at the beginning of a line. No Microsoft application to date for word processing supports a regular expression in an easy to use manner (you have to go into writing VBA scripts.)

In Vim it is easy

To date I've used GVIM for the better part of 2 years now. Hell of a hard time starting out but after the first month and to this very day, it gets just a little easier

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You are just talking about the regular expression replace, which is way possible in many many Windows editors... I didn't say I use wordpad to do my coding... I use EmEditor personally but there's also EditPlus, WordPad2, UltraPad and I left out a few dozen more featureful text editors on Windows that can do it.

You just bracket the numbers... do the substitution, no problem, but unlike Vim, when you want to type in '/', you don't have to escape it and you can even turn on/off regular expression replace, so you don't have to worry about special characters when you feel like using plain text replace.

So, nothing sounds better at this part.

And to add some, until you read through vim documentation thoroughly, you have no idea how to use vim, which puts me (and plenty other people) away fast too. I don't even know if it's possible to turn off regular expression on search and replace in vim, so I don't have to keep escaping dots when I don't want it to match anything. And not only you have to read the doc, you have to actually remember the commands (ie : tabm, tabf inven*, showtabline or was it tabshowline??? very confusing and honestly I don't have enough memory to remember 100 vim commands while actually using my brain on the coding part and trying to figure out my memory what the command it was to go through my tabs), instead of just the shortcuts (although it seems you can define them yourself by editing yet another hard to figure out config file)

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Because vim is way better than *all* the windows text editors youve tried. You can always map the commands to shortcuts (its linked on the article) so you would type even less, besides, vim has endless plugins for coding making it the perfect IDE, so i guess your opinion is just because your lack of knowledge about vim.

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> Because vim is way better than *all* the windows text editors youve tried.<nobr> <wbr></nobr>...

I don't know all of the features of vim, but I'd bet that Mansfield Software Group's Kedit with its ability to use the REXX scripting language, would rival the things that can be done with vim.

A significant limiting factor, though, is the fact that it is non-free. It is a $129 product when downloaded from Mansfield.

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Well, trying to conclude my ever wondering 'is vim better' in 2 lines sounds just so easy, but really... it is that hard to find out how useful vim is, and it never brought me more productivity than the Windows editors in the past few years.

Certainly, you can map command in Windows editors too, and whatever the plugins that they offer, I don't find them any useful.

Say, foldings... why do you hide your code? You might forget about a variable at certain place and make a new bug thinking it's not used. If your code is too long... just split the files up...

Function name auto completion? If you're a serious programmer, you really do already remember most of the function names that you usually use along with the parameter requirements, but if you do get stuck in that, you should refer the actual language doc.

Display split? Seriously, seeing only 1% of the whole code makes a real sloppy coding and is prone to serious coding problems as you have less code revealed to yourself, I never split screen.

Now, what Windows editors offer, where Vim doesn't are.

Visually pleasing layout, you can definately see what files are open in tabs (now that vim finally caught up).
You know if the file is at the last saved state by looking at if the 'Save' button is greyed out or not.
You see the encoding method and total line numbers and all (though latter is visible in vim too).
And with a explorer extension, you can even have a list of files displayed on your left or right edge to figure out a good strucutre of your project and easy file opening, instead of in vim, you start out with<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:tabnew and blindly typing in folder and file names and keep pressing 'tab' to find out the file name matches and open file, and if you want to open yet another file in yet another folder, you have to dig through again, until you do a 'cd' first, which is completely reluctant to do than simply visually looking through the whole project file structure and clicking through it while maintaining visible information on the parent folders.

So, say what's better about vim again.

Just to troll (with a good reason) a slightly bit to fire up vim lovers =) but why do 95% of vim themes look super ugly? Do you think people would even code good with 'blue' color scheme? It hurts my eyes from the first second.

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Not only that, you can tell it do that phone-number search-and-replace only on lines that have, say, a 202 area code (or a US phone number, or whatever). Other programmer-friendly features:

- syntax highlighting in any language
- tags
- paren matching (very useful for Lisp<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:-) )
- incremental search (including regular expressions)
- platform agnosticism
- scriptability via ex
(the list is endless)

The learning curve is definitely steep, but two or three days of exclusive vi use are enough to learn basic functionality.

But you're right: if you don't like the keyboard, you won't like vi. (Of course, one could argue that if you don't like the keyboard you're in the wrong profession anyway<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:-).)

Best,

J

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Hmm, finally a good list of vim's good features.

But, the first argument can be done via a regular expression itself. Then again, I find it hard to use regular expression on vim on, say, 10 specific lines I choose from. I read it somewhere you have to tell the line numbers to execute the regular expression, while I can just drag my mouse over the lines where I want them to execute the regex on my editor and just Ctrl+h and run it instead, which is more intuitive and faster than checking out what the line numbers are.

Then the first 4 of the lists are possible by default on my Windows text editor (not notepad...) as for the rest I never felt the need, so never using it, but EmEditor had a macro scripting function in perl/php/ruby/js or some such languages last time I read about it not in just 'ex' line editing command we never use day to day.

The list is endless, I know, and how you can customize vim is also endless, I know, but the complexity of it is also endless, making me rather not use it anyway.

I just find it, until you customize vim so it doesn't even look like vim anymore to your best taste, it only has features that is capable in Windows text editors but with uglier(= harder to use) desgin.

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Tabs in text editors existed for over 5 years at least on the various editors I've been using on Windows.




Try something like 20 years, you fucking Windows-wiener.






I can help to have my hands to relax off keyboard from time to time.




We don't want to hear your wank-stories, thank you very much.

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Since people have responded about key mapping and GUI capabilities, I won't belabor the point. You can also tab-complete any esoteric command, so using them can be fast.

Also, I haven't felt either that with or without mouse is better for text editing, as I'd like to take some time to actually start typing my code after looking through at the various part of my code with my mouse wheel scrolling, instead of having the necessity to keep my hand on keyboard all the time for endless typing. I can help to have my hands to relax off keyboard from time to time.

vim does have excellent mouse support (both gvim & console vim). Try it--you can even use your mousewheel. Just because a lot of people who use vim find they are more productive with their fingers on the homerow doesn't mean that you need to keep them there to use the editor.

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What I like about vim is it is ubiquitous. On anywhere there can be vim, so I don't consider gvim anything interesting, but only maybe when I need vim on a local machine.

And mouse is not always supported, so to use real power of vim, as in, edit anywhere with your vim style, I was expecting there is something really good about keyboard only use. But I guess some people love vim with mouse, which I wasn't really considering about and probably won't in future too.

Someone just tell me, are people who love vim, just never used a serious Windows mouse-enabled text editor to know what is best or they have a good reason to ditch any other editor to tell it is practically the best??? I'm way confused over the years.

At least if I see vim user's point of view, I can knod or something, because some part of editors are just a matter of personal preference, but all I see about vim is about weirdness and ugly color theme and no idea how this can improve my coding. And every tutorial out there about vim starts with telling me to go insert mode first and exit with ZZ and that's about it. And a page that looks to be on advanced vim topic is usually 7 years old.

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But, the first argument can be done via a regular expression itself.
Then again, I find it hard to use regular expression on vim on, say,
10 specific lines I choose from.

That was exactly what I was talking about: choosing specific lines on
which to run your substitution. You can choose by number, or by some
selection, or by various more sophisticated criteria.

I read it somewhere you have to tell the line numbers to execute the
regular expression,

Not true. You can use regular expressions on mouse-highlighted
regions as well. You can even use them (and any other
text-manipulation features) on rectangular blocks (columns 10-20 on
lines 5-10, say). I don't know of any other editor that can do that.

Then the first 4 of the lists are possible by default on my Windows
text editor (not notepad...) as for the rest I never felt the need,
so never using it, but EmEditor had a macro scripting function in
perl/php/ruby/js or some such languages last time I read about it
not in just 'ex' line editing command we never use day to day.

First of all, vi also supports perl/python/whatever scripting. The point is that ex commands are vi commands.

Secondly, I'm not interested in getting into a feature-for-feature
comparison with you. I thought you were asking for a sample of
features, so I gave you a sample. If you're not interested in those
features, well, that's your business. If you're interested in all the
features, read the documentation.

Unfortunately, now you're starting to sound like a troll.

The list is endless, I know, and how you can customize vim is also
endless, I know, but the complexity of it is also endless, making me
rather not use it anyway.

I just find it, until you customize vim so it doesn't even look like
vim anymore to your best taste, it only has features that is capable
in Windows text editors but with uglier(= harder to use)
desgin.

That's great for you. If your editor is so wonderful, why even bother
reading an article about vim?

J

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It sounds like EmEditor can do many things Vim can do. That is great news for sithrunner and others who want some Vim features in a familiar ms-windows-looking package. Vim appeals to people who are willing to deal with greater complexity to obtain greater flexibility. Some people leverage the flexibility of Vim to become very efficient. Others simply enjoy tinkering with complex applications like Vim.

Beyond even the flexibility of it's commands, Vim has another virtue editors like EmEditor do not have: it is open source. As open source, I can rewrite the source code to make it do anything I want (if I have the time and energy required). Also, as open source, I know there is a community of people who will keep improving Vim because they care about it. If the company that sells EmEditor every goes bankrupt, I hope it releases the code as open source and I hope some of its devotees learn enough about how it works to keep it going (and build in some of the flexibility that Vim has).
~

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Ok, like the title suggests... i'm asking 'WHY' are people cheering and using vim like telling people they can be 'godlike' once they master but having a steep learning curve, because whatever feature or anything I see in vim doesn't concern me to become a god about text editing more than my current text editing environment, so I'm asking anyone has any clue or it's just a april's fool someone provided.

Thus, asked for features, and I just concluded on my side, that's nothing new just in vim to make me godlike.

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well, the sibling reply was meant for the upper reply...sry...

Well, as a practical thinking mind, I don't care if the code is open or not as long as the editor actually serves. Free products better keep source open or once the guy in charge feel like quitting because he got bored, the product is gone forever. Otoh, commercial app at least has a motivation to keep it going as long as it's a good product with good amount of followers.

And I for one believe, many hobby programmers doesn't really beat up a few payed programmers.

So, you can say that vim isn't for people who just want to get the editor to work and get the thing done with minimal gui configuration, but first read the vim doc for a week, then edit vim configuration for the next week, then start coding?

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Vim annoyed me to no end when I started it.

Now I'm addicted to split screens.

And in the utter oddness, I love the modal editing.

I think the trouble is that people do not generally get a good introduction to vim. Most tutorials I came across suggested that I needed to use letter keys as arrows.

As for tabs, I do not really see the use. It doesn't matter what files I have open. By the end of a session I've typically opened so many files it does not matter. But with<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:e I can grab a file anywhere in my source tree with ease.

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With 'e:' don't you forget the directory structure? And it's annoying when there are many similarly named files when you have to keep pressing tab tab tab and figure out the right name you want to edit. And if the files are deeper, opening files one by one is like... very tedius to me.

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For an overview of the logic behind many of vim's design decisions, see <a href="http://www.moolenaar.net/habits.html" title="moolenaar.net">http://www.moolenaar.net/habits.html</a moolenaar.net>

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and so you're comparing vim console mode to your GUI editors.. and argumenting that vim sucks because of the low mouse usage in console.

Well first that argumentation is rather trollish, but second, rejoice as vim does support in console mouse.

of course its austere but.. :
set mouse=a

and also for command auto completion:
set wildmenu
set wildmode=list:longest,full

enjoy

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I'm not putting mouse and non-mouse comparison on the table. Either it has mouse use or not does not seriously concern me as long as either of it makes a better use.

And I think mouse should be put aside for real programming when you want a total ubiquitous editing environment via ssh+vim. (gvim is only useful for running it locally).

But even such a portable app, I failed to see how good vim is, even there are many enthusiasts of it around the world.

So, I'm not trying to complain vim has no mouse or anything.

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Now, what Windows editors offer, where Vim doesn't are.

Vim/gVim is available on Windows too.
I'm using Vim both on Linux, Windows and AIX. Being able to use the same editor on different platforms, and sharing the same configuration, is a major feature of vim.

Display split? Seriously, seeing only 1% of the whole code makes a real sloppy coding and is prone to serious coding problems as you have less code revealed to yourself, I never split screen.

I'm using it occasionally when I have to move code or to view two parts of a file at the same time (such as data structure definition while writing code that uses it).

Just to troll (with a good reason) a slightly bit to fire up vim lovers =) but why do 95% of vim themes look super ugly? Do you think people would even code good with 'blue' color scheme? It hurts my eyes from the first second.

I'm using the blue scheme 8 hours a day when coding.

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When people worked with WordPerfect on total BSO[D?] I can understand it, but not for people when million color display was the first computer ever seen.

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vim requires you to read the doc.
on gui editors not only its a bit more simple (because you "see" commands) but also you used it all your life, so no need to relearn.

Of course, the best editor is the one that fits YOU

I personally use them all but i'm happy when i got vim. Once you've been using it for a while, typing commands is so much faster.

While you hit ctrl+h then enable/disable regexp or click in the right field (or use tab key), etc to finally do your search and replace, i probably typed a one liner that achieve the same result and maybe in 15 diff tabs.
Of course, for whoever never used vim it looks like I typed a alien-impossible-to-decipher command, while I didn't even think about it.

That's just because, yeah, you do need to learn it.

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Display split? Seriously, seeing only 1% of the whole code makes a real sloppy coding and is prone to serious coding problems as you have less code revealed to yourself, I never split screen.

Have you heard about vertical split? Or have you ever used "vimdiff" or vim diff mode? That is the best usage of a vertical split I've seen in my life!<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:D

Visually pleasing layout, you can definately see what files are open in tabs (now that vim finally caught up).
You know if the file is at the last saved state by looking at if the 'Save' button is greyed out or not.
You see the encoding method and total line numbers and all (though latter is visible in vim too).
And with a explorer extension, you can even have a list of files displayed on your left or right edge to figure out a good strucutre of your project and easy file opening, instead of in vim, you start out with<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:tabnew and blindly typing in folder and file names and keep pressing 'tab' to find out the file name matches and open file, and if you want to open yet another file in yet another folder, you have to dig through again, until you do a 'cd' first, which is completely reluctant to do than simply visually looking through the whole project file structure and clicking through it while maintaining visible information on the parent folders.

If you're comparing with a graphical editor then you should use gvim as the reference, and not vim. Or if you insist in comparing with vim, please don't compare graphical features.
Even though not quite as good looking as tabs an<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:ls would be enough to show all open buffers and their state. And it doesn't use screen space. Or use the "miniBufExplorer" plugin.
If you can't see enconding method and line numbers then you're statusbar is not configured correctly. It can show all that and more!
Please use<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:Exp for file exploring. Or use the "project" plugin.

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For the time vim has been developed, I don't take vim's console nature being a excuse not to be as visually functioning compared to other gui editors. For tabs, like it is on vim 7, you can have them listed at the top of the screen, which is handy, but until vim 7, there was no such thing, you always had to type something to just check out what you're opening, unless you're a serious vim config hacker and had your vim already at as equally featureful as vim 10.

No, I don't use diff much.

><nobr> <wbr></nobr>:ls would be enough
Enough doesn't mean, there can't be improvements, at least in my opinion, vim can learn from modern gui editors by a good margin than stick with the old style.

Yeah, some plugins are cool like that miniExplorer thing, but that doens't still solve my mystery how people think vim is the best (or 2nd best<nobr> <wbr></nobr>;) ) editor.

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The search and replace uses some weird windows default dialog without regular expression capability. And if you use the cream search/replace dialog, it asks for confirmation on every step which is way too silly.

Both of this are configurable. The defaults are sane for newbs.

Btw, I'm all talking about console vim, not gvim

Why discount gvim, except to troll (as you are apparently more comfortable in a GUI environment)? The nice thing about vim is that you have a choice.

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I replied about this on the sibling reply, but what I mean about not liking gvim is, I find vim's true value that vim is/can be deployed on just about on any machine you want to touch, and on top of that, since it's a console app, you can use it remotely via ssh, which means, once you get the hang of it, it becomes total goodness, you can edit the way you want on any machine from anywhere but I just can't find what's so better, or even as productive as some other editors out there about vim, which is too bad.

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As for display split... yes, I have 1680x1050 screen, which can be big, but I'd like to see at the least 50 lines (my current situation is prolly 60 or so lines visible) vertically

You can still see A LOT of code. Your concern seems to be use of vertical real estate (with<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:split). At home, I also have only about 50 lines of text in 16 point font at 1600x1200 (I sit about 6' back, as it is primarily used for media. At work, I fit about 80 lines of text at 11 pt. This can make for horizontal splits of about 40 lines each, or a 50 line primary & a 30 line secondary if you prefer.

To tell you the truth, though, I think the real benefit is in the so-called<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:vsplit. I use it on 4:3 monitors, and it would seem even more natural for anyone using a 16:9. This will let you see the same number of lines, but will make better use of horizontal real estate. When code gets to be much longer than about 80 columns, it can be really tedious to look at. At 11-point, I have about 200 columns! vsplits are also excellent for diffs.

Besides, I don't know why I want to look at 2 files at once, when I can just 'Ctrl+Tab' to go back and forth files with full width/height.

That is slower. Especially if one of the files must be referenced extensively. Some people use transparent terms so that they can see the text in a web browser underneath for the same reason. Ctrl-Tabing may be more intuitive for some people & you can still do that in vim.

And the colors... come on... it's 21st century, we got million color display.

And vim supports all 16M colors (assuming your window manager or terminal do). vim ships with PLENTY of color schemes (I like 'desert'), others can be downloaded, and you can make a custom one. How are you limited by the colors?!

I'm starting to put this as a conclusion that vim is for the old people.

I'm 25. Is that old?

I used UltraEdit on windows for quite a while. It is still a first-rate editor, but only works on Windows & is proprietary.

Vim can do everything I used UltraEdit for & even a little bit more (some of which is possible in UltraEdit, but is not trivial to setup). Vim can be everywhere--it is free & has nothing which would make redistribution difficult. I can usually trust it being available on *nix & I can put a portable version on my USB drive.

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Thanks for good reply, makes sense to hear opinions from someone who likes vim than people who want to flame back.

I see your point about horizontal split, it is quite roomy horizontally on a wide display and can have a good use for a diff.

As for themes, desert does look to be the most decent out of the horrible rest with 8 colors or some such. Yes I can make a custom one, but I'm tedius to learn that vim theme script when I'd rather start coding already on another editor. Besides, there could be better theme made by someone else by now... but I failed to find much good ones, leave out just a few.

And colors, as for PuTTY, I only recognized about how to turn on 256 colors, which was still a giant step forward from 8 colors or so, but if I see million color, soft looking theme usable from putty or from mac terminal or gnome-terminal etc, then I'd be surprised and happy.

25, that's same age as me. I only said it, because, for one, I never really found anyone around my age using vim seriously, and the way it behaves, sounded as if it is only for people from 1980's programmers. As for pressing ESC to get out of insert mode, the initial keyboard the vim dev used had ESC at where TAB is on modern keyboard, which is WAY easier to press. I nowadays press 'Ctrl+C' to get out of insert mode, because I hate reaching my finger off to the edge of keyboard. And these reasons make me thing, vim is stubborn about not trying to be modern. Good to see someone at this age using it and liking it.

Yes, I hate single platform application, as I like to use Mac personally, could use Windows from time to time, and use Unix for shell access, but rarely for gui, and it's rare to find app that I can always use at any place.

Portability rocks, I just need to find how to use it that is at least a bit less or near on par with my current environment or otherwise I do not feel for the switch obviously.

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Free products better keep source open or once the guy in charge feel like quitting because he got bored, the product is gone forever.

Developers are motivated by different things. Some freeware developers might hope to build an audience & eventually create something they think they could get a lot of money for.

Otoh, commercial app at least has a motivation to keep it going as long as it's a good product with good amount of followers.

There have been plenty of commercial apps which have been abandoned for one reason or another.

So, you can say that vim isn't for people who just want to get the editor to work and get the thing done with minimal gui configuration

Why not? evim is used in place of other editors at my work by newbs. It highlights most syntax you can encounter, which is quite useful. You can install new syntax highlighting in most programmers editors, but vim already has even esoteric highlighting by default. And you can know that you'll never "outgrow" your editor.

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With 'e:' don't you forget the directory structure?

':e<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.' will open a directory browser for the current working directory. (And<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:e with any directory after it will start the browser in that directory.) Plus, as you mention, you have tab-completion.

And it's annoying when there are many similarly named files when you have to keep pressing tab tab tab and figure out the right name you want to edit.

Didn't you say "real programmers" recall their function names/variables/etc.? Do they additionally forget their filenames?

One tab gives you a list of all possible matches. You can add a bit more text & tab to finish the completion. There's absolutely no reason to "tab-tab-tab..." And, you always have the browser.

I can't think of how file selection could be improved significantly. It has the same kind of browser available.to the windows editors you praise, but allows you to type names if that is quicker for you.

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And mouse is not always supported

If you can install any other editor, I'd imagine that you can install vim with mouse support!

Vi is ubiquitous, yes. But vim is additionally flexible.

Someone just tell me, are people who love vim, just never used a serious Windows mouse-enabled text editor

I've used a lot of editors on windows. I used UltraEdit for many years.

to know what is best or they have a good reason to ditch any other editor to tell it is practically the best??? I'm way confused over the years.

Tools are a personal choice. If you don't like or don't get vim, then don't use it. What is the point of trolling in vim related articles?

but all I see about vim is about weirdness and ugly color theme and no idea how this can improve my coding.

But you choose the weirdness & the colors. You can make a customized, idiosyncratic environment which will work for you almost anywhere.

And a page that looks to be on advanced vim topic is usually 7 years old.

You did look at the date of the article you're commenting on now, didn't you. Or do you think you are you from the year 2014?

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For one... not every computer has the luxury for me to change config, like ssh'ing into someone else's owned computer, be it the school comp or company comp or whatever, then my mouse demand would be flying out the window.

Yes, it's a personal choice, but when people cheer it up so much, when in my honest opinion think, it's far from any productive, you know why I had to ask how good it is to someone who knows it. I said it was a troll, but it has a point.

No, I didn't choose the colors, they were the default ones, and I never found anything that fits, I couldn't choose, and no I didn't choose to write my theme file just for the sake of learning complex theme config.

Did you ever googled for vim advanced topic pretending you're the 2nd day vim user? You will know what I mean. And this article is only about the tabs, not for 'how to get used to editing in vim seriously'. So, no, I'm still from year 2007 and my statement is not wrong.

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You can't run your windows editor over ssh. You said your editor was better than vim. This is apples and oranges. Compare gvim to your editor, as you'd have to run either one locally.but I just can't find what's so better, or even as productive as some other editors out there about vim, which is too bad.You have yet to say how gvim is less productive than your GUI editor of choice or given the name of a superior console editor.

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You can't run your windows editor over ssh. You said your editor was better than vim. This is apples and oranges. Compare gvim to your editor, as you'd have to run either one locally.

but I just can't find what's so better, or even as productive as some other editors out there about vim, which is too bad.

You have yet to say how gvim is less productive than your GUI editor of choice or given the name of a superior console editor.

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I said, vim has its strong point of being portable, but on the other hand, in terms of productivity windows editor does a better job for me, so why is this orange apple business?

I'm not really interested in gvim, though it has a feature of vim + some more, because it only runs locally (well, almost) as well as only on gui environments, which I already have a use of.

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Yeah, some plugins are cool like that miniExplorer thing, but that doens't still solve my mystery how people think vim is the best (or 2nd best<nobr> <wbr></nobr>;) ) editor.

Even though vim is my first choice as an editor, this is opinion is not only mine. I have co-workers that don't use vim and when they see me programming they just go all "how did you do that so fast??". You can disagree with what we are telling you, buf after that steep learning curve there really is a brand new World under vim!<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:)

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Is this just new terminology for buffers? Vim has had the ability to edit multiple files for ages now.

See:

<a href="http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/usr_22.html#22.4" title="sourceforge.net">http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/usr_22.html<nobr>#<wbr></nobr> 22.4</a sourceforge.net> and <a href="http://www.vim.org/tips/tip.php?tip_id=135" title="vim.org">http://www.vim.org/tips/tip.php?tip_id=135</a vim.org>

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A buffer is merely a single text file you're editing. A tab is actually a "window", which may include one or more viewports (each of which contains a buffer).

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are you saying you're 25 and can't remember using a 16 or even 256 color screen?

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You actually started this thread by saying:

Also, I haven't felt either that with or without mouse is better for text editing, as I'd like to take some time to actually start typing my code after looking through at the various part of my code with my mouse wheel scrolling<nobr> <wbr></nobr>....

I never can like vim (or emacs for that matter) that if it's any better than Windows text editing with mouse.

You've been informed that vim supports windows text editing with a mouse. If you wanted to make a sincere comparison, you'd therefore compare your current windows editor with GVIM on windows. It'd be apples:apples.

You don't want a sincere comparison. When command-line vim has mouse support, it can even work over ssh. But you don't want to make that comparison either.

You want to bitch that some machine you ssh into doesn't apparently have mouse support for vim. Why not complain to your admin? Or use X11? Blaming vim for the way the vim on your server was compiled is isiotic

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I've been using vim (and gvim in X) for a long time. Having multiple tabs makes editing multiple source files easier, and the<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:tabdo function will come in real handy for changing variable and function names.

To the trolls posting above, vim does have a lot of functionality from the keyboard that isn't always available with a mouse. Like editing multible configuration files from a console window (no XWindows). It isn't as powerful as most IDEs, but it's simplicity and small size makes editing projects and text files quicker. In a simple test, gvim loaded a 266k source file in half the time as kwrite. And don't bother comparing to any text editor in Windows. They don't have half the functionality (try debugging compiler errors with notepad).

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Note that you can still use viewports normally within tabbed windows, and tabs are useful for doing a quick edit in a file when you have a main Vim window set up with a couple of viewports arranged just right.

Indeed, this is the only way I've used the tab feature. I normally have very related files open in a few viewports & will only open a tab if I need to quickly scan another file or jot down an unrelated note.

Sometimes, I still end up wishing to put the new tab in the context of some of my viewports in my "main" tab.

Is there an easy way to move a viewport to either a preexisting and/or new tab?

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And to add some, until you read through vim documentation thoroughly, you have no idea how to use vim, which puts me (and plenty other people) away fast too.

There's <a href="http://cream.sourceforge.net/" title="sourceforge.net">cream</a sourceforge.net> or 'easy vim' ('evim') for those who want to get up-and-running quickly.

Most people should start with 'vimtutor', rather than reading a lot of documentation.

And not only you have to read the doc, you have to actually remember the commands

As you point out, you can map these to key combinations or easier to remember commands. You can also frequently use your mouse and the GUI if you're into that sort of thing.

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Yes, I tried cream, but it was more or less just in between vim and my Windows text editor, which... just won't fit anywhere. The search and replace uses some weird windows default dialog without regular expression capability. And if you use the cream search/replace dialog, it asks for confirmation on every step which is way too silly.

I never knew about evim, but as for vimtutor... that is one joke. Yes, I learnt how to move my cursor, yank a few lines, delete 2 lines at once, but that never really make me feel comfortable going using vim any further. Every other 'vim newbie' tutorial site repeats how I can yank 2 lines, paste things, and there is command mode and whatnot and use 'i' and 'a' to start typing... yes I know that... and that is not the problem anyway.

Btw, I'm all talking about console vim, not gvim, where you can use mouse and all, as I heard vim is about not letting go of your hand off the keyboard. Besides, vim's true power at least, what I can point out is a very versatile cross platform capability, where you can use it anywhere, even from PuTTY on Windows on remote machine. So, gvim really means nothing to me.

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I'll feed the troll a bit more, as a little bit of info on the advantages of folding, etc. would be useful to the uninitiated (I certainly didn't see the point until I started using some of these features!)

Say, foldings... why do you hide your code? You might forget about a variable at certain place and make a new bug thinking it's not used.

Folding is usually based on scope, so it is hard for me to see when this would be a problem. (You can fold a whole function, for instance. Any variable unique to that function probably won't collie outside the function.)

In any case, vim supports <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ctags" title="wikipedia.org">tags</a wikipedia.org>, so you have little excuse to "forget."

Function name auto completion? If you're a serious programmer, you really do already remember most of the function names that you usually use along with the parameter requirements, but if you do get stuck in that, you should refer the actual language doc.In many cases, you do know. But having completion can save A LOT of typing. In the cases you've forgotten, completion is often faster than checking the docs. "Intellisense" completion was one of the most-requested features of all time!

Display split?

Moonitors are BIG these days. Why not use the space effectively? You advocated for splitting big files into small ones when you said folding was useless. Well, splits will allow you to have multiple small files open. You could use the other files just for reference or can change anything that needs to be refactored.

Just to troll (with a good reason) a slightly bit to fire up vim lovers =) but why do 95% of vim themes look super ugly? Do you think people would even code good with 'blue' color scheme? It hurts my eyes from the first second.

The old WordPerfect was white-on-blue by default & it was quite popular.

The bottom-line is that you don't need to use every feature in vim (and there are a lot). Being comfortable with a few of the features CAN make some people more productive (which is why people choose it). Don't belittle other people's choices--just be comfortable with your own.

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Yes, I don't completely ditch folding, as folding an already properly written function can save some space. But that never makes me feel like I should just use vim. It's probably used by many other editors too.

Auto completion probably is people's personal preference though. I would rather pull it out of my memory than let it awkwardly let it make suggestion 1 letter by 1.

As for display split... yes, I have 1680x1050 screen, which can be big, but I'd like to see at the least 50 lines (my current situation is prolly 60 or so lines visible) vertically to actually have a good look of my code than 25 lines each and half width splitting the screen in 4. Besides, I don't know why I want to look at 2 files at once, when I can just 'Ctrl+Tab' to go back and forth files with full width/height.

And the colors... come on... it's 21st century, we got million color display. Those colors are really only for the people who lived to be a programmer during 1970s 1980s and feel nostalgic and never for anyone else, because apparently they look ugly. And I guess many people from those ages use vim, thus the default color scheme never ever evolve to include good colors. PuTTY can do 256 colors, no idea why not million colors, but anyway, there aren't even many color schemes for 256 years, not to mention anything that looks soft and feel like coding.

I'm starting to put this as a conclusion that vim is for the old people. And since vim is stubborn enough not to get matched up with current environment, I guess it's gonna be a fossile.

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You obviously have not spent much time with Unix (and its derivatives). Much in *nix is still done via the command line, hence an editor that works on the command line is required and will be relevant until command line interfaces are dropped. Your refusal to consider gVim removes any credibility you otherwise might have had. Apples to apples please (otherwise you're comparing benefits of command-line vs GUI). Sure, you're wondering why people like Vim so much, but it's something completely different from what you use. Consider this analogy: A tank driver wonders why people cheer fighter jets, and lists some defects of the jet (can't drive through walls, can't take multiple hits, etc), and concludes that the tank is better. The only similarity between the tank and the jet is their purpose, which is to kill people. Seriously, vim and your GUI editors are completely different. Vim starts up in a second. Uses so few resources that I can run it on my cellphone with all features (a bit hard given the lack of a proper keyboard, but I did this as a proof of concept).

I think people cheer vim because: Once you've become reasonably familiar with it, it's just *fast*. You know exactly what you want to do, you know the commands to get it done, you type it out. Faster than clicking through multiple menus, etc. Vim has many (if not all) features other text editors have, and once you're used to it you can do things faster than in other editors. Granted, the learning curve is incredibly steep, so a valid question may be, why should people learn it? Remember, the cheering is done by people who are good with vim. You ride a motorbike all your life, and without taking any car driving training, wonder why cars are hard to drive, and wonder why people like cars so much.

Regarding the color scheme, there's a good reason it has such "poor" schemes. Vim runs on many more computers than average intel pentium/core/whatever windows desktops. Some of these machines don't have a video card , and run operating systems without the ability to draw more than 8 (or in some cases 1) colors on the screen (why would you need millions on a server that you look at once a year?). So, if the author made "pretty" color schemes, a lot of unnecessary code would be devoted to trying to detect if the system can draw those colors or not. On my linux desktop with millions of colors, I use a terminal emulator that sets the font colors and background image (translucent) and such for me, and vim's code highlighting works well with these. I don't use vim's built in themes, but I end up with a very pretty "color scheme" when using vim, quite comparable to those on windows editors. The OS's graphics capability does this for me, same as windows' graphics capability allows editors to look good. I don't know what your point is with vim's color schemes. Oh, putty can't forward more colors because the terminal doesn't recognize more than 256. Use X for graphical stuff.

To feed the troll: I'm a student and part-time unix sysadmin and programmer, I'm 20. I think you're the old one, being inflexible and unwilling to learn technology. Ever heard of X-forwarding? Poor you. You're too young to have seen the reasons for ssh and such, yet you're too arrogant to consider that they may have uses other than the ones you know of. I see your problem as being:
1. Don't know how to use X-forwarding but lost on the command line (human nature to criticize things we don't understand)
2. Unwilling to put effort into learning (and this is the most dangerous)

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Bingo! (and Bravo!) ....

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I found this short HOWTO useful. It came out just in time for when I had to use Vim for a project with multiple files. I'm always reluctant to learn how to use Vim properly. Before reading this HOWTO I used multiple xterms when editing files with Vim. However, the problem with that is copying text. The only way to copy text between xterms that I know of is with the mouse, and it doesn't seem to preserve tabs for me. As a result of this HOWTO I learned how to use tabs and yanking!

Thanks.

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Nice, but I learned editing with multiple files and windowing in VIM.



Why VIM?

It was a work requirement to configure some Cyclades equipment. Those didn't even have Pico or Nano. To re-enforce the habit, I use VIM every where I could, even church. I used Crimson Editor briefly, but VIM is every where I want to be, even Windows after I installed it. VIM is a consistent all-platform editor (except PalmOS, haven't found one for Palm. Hope iPhone or iPod Touch get VIM eventually). And since I learned Visual Block mode in VIM, I don't miss rectangular selection in MS Word.

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Is is possible to have many tabs of gvimdiffs?

I want to have 1 gvim window open with 10 tabs. Each tab has its own 2 unique files being diffed.

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Very useful article, thanks!


Sean Hodges (www.seanhodges.co.uk/~sean/medes)

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