Vim is quite famous for being the best text editor in the world. However it has quite a learning curve, especially for people who don’t touch type and who aren’t much interested in their own productivity. Over the years, there were a few efforts to help the newcomers learn the basics. But, I think, nothing came close to the amazing game Vim adventures – a maze navigation game, that uses Vim controls.
After years of using Vim, I recently moved to its graphical version – gvim. It turned out that things that I didn’t like about gvim are trivial to fix.
set guifont=Console set guioptions-=m " No menu set guioptions-=T " No toolbar set guioptions+=c " Use console dialogs where possible
You’d probably want to read “:help guioptions” for more.
Now there is a greater variety of colorschemes to choose from, and, finally, I can have italic font for comments in the code – nothing beats that!
If, for some reason, you don’t like the editor of your blogging tool (WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, etc), you have a few options to consider. Those of you hosing your own blogs, can always try a plugin or two. WordPress, for example, has a number of plugins which either add pieces of functionality or completely replace the default editor. Alternatively, you can try an external editor. That is, you can use a piece of software which is not a part of your blogging platform, for writing posts. There are Firefox plugins (ScribeFire, Xinha Here!), standalone applications (w.bloggar, Windows Live Writer, and more, and more), and web services (Performancing.com) that do this.
Today I was reminded, that one can even use Google Docs for this purpose. Create a new document or spreadsheet, edit it all you want and then publish it straight into your blog. That’s how easy it is. (You’ll need to configure a few simple settings the first time you do so though). If it sounds interesting, check this post at Blogopreneur.com fordetailed instructions. If it sounds interesting, but you are not sure if your blogging platform is supported, check out this list of supported platforms.
Me? I am happy with WordPress built-in editor.
I don’t need this functionality very often, but when I do, it’s nice to have a quick and easy way to do it. In order to insert the current filename, while in insert mode press Ctrl-r%.
Via vim users mailing list.
Here are a bunch of bookmarks about Vim text editor.
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