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Efficient Editing With vim

jmcpherson.org

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Re: Efficient Editing With vim

#111
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried vim like browsing? http://vimperator.org/trac/wiki/Vimperator For keyboard lovers.

Can you explain why Vimperator is a good idea. As a vim user myself, I understand vim was designed first and foremost to input and edit text using the keyboard, is bringing those key bindings to browsing the web is a good idea? For the best navigating experience, I feel Opera does really well. You keep one hand on the keyboard (nearing 1, 2 to switch tab; and z, x to move back & forth in history) and one hand on the…

Yes, vimperator is great. Try it, you'll see. Vimperator makes it so you barely use the mouse, and that's definitely an improvement imnsho.

Re: Efficient Editing With vim

#112
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried vim like browsing? http://vimperator.org/trac/wiki/Vimperator For keyboard lovers.

Can you explain why Vimperator is a good idea. As a vim user myself, I understand vim was designed first and foremost to input and edit text using the keyboard, is bringing those key bindings to browsing the web is a good idea? For the best navigating experience, I feel Opera does really well. You keep one hand on the keyboard (nearing 1, 2 to switch tab; and z, x to move back & forth in history) and one hand on the…

[deleted]

Re: Efficient Editing With vim

#113
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried vim like browsing? http://vimperator.org/trac/wiki/Vimperator For keyboard lovers.

Can you explain why Vimperator is a good idea. As a vim user myself, I understand vim was designed first and foremost to input and edit text using the keyboard, is bringing those key bindings to browsing the web is a good idea? For the best navigating experience, I feel Opera does really well. You keep one hand on the keyboard (nearing 1, 2 to switch tab; and z, x to move back & forth in history) and one hand on the…

When I used Vimperator (I finally changed back just because I don't like how FF performs on OS X) I found I was strongly bimodal — surprise — where I'd spend the majority of my time just using the keyboard, both hands, and then if something demanded the mouse I shift to my trackpad.

The thing I want to point out is how loathe I became to switch to that trackpad. Vimperator makes you despise flash even more.

Re: Efficient Editing With vim

#114
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also ViewSourceWith which allows the use of different editors.

. . . but Vimperator also Vimperates the entire browser, instead of just the text areas. Unless you're an Emacs zealot, I don't see the downside.

I think we got it by now. Unfortunately, vimperator has quite a few quirks and makes too many changes that cannot easily be undone, which is the reason why I uninstalled it and moved to VSW.

Re: Efficient Editing With vim

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My preference is to use things like cd and ls to browse the filesystem. When I'm feeling really fancy, I might use tree.

Do you sometimes let loose and use tree -C?

I have done so, but not in a long time. Then again, I haven't even used tree in a long time. Maybe I don't really use it any longer.

Hmm. . . .

Re: Efficient Editing With vim

#116
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

. . . but Vimperator also Vimperates the entire browser, instead of just the text areas. Unless you're an Emacs zealot, I don't see the downside.

I think we got it by now. Unfortunately, vimperator has quite a few quirks and makes too many changes that cannot easily be undone, which is the reason why I uninstalled it and moved to VSW.

I moved in the opposite direction, from VSW (which I used heavily for a while) to Vimperator.

Re: Efficient Editing With vim

#117
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried vim like browsing? http://vimperator.org/trac/wiki/Vimperator For keyboard lovers.

Can you explain why Vimperator is a good idea. As a vim user myself, I understand vim was designed first and foremost to input and edit text using the keyboard, is bringing those key bindings to browsing the web is a good idea? For the best navigating experience, I feel Opera does really well. You keep one hand on the keyboard (nearing 1, 2 to switch tab; and z, x to move back & forth in history) and one hand on the…

You may not be aware of it, but the view command on (most?) Unix systems is basically a read-only way to execute vi. It has the same keybindings in general, of course, because it's actually the same program with the -R option, more useful than more or less. It's especially more useful because one can "break out" of the read-only limitations if necessary (and if one has the requisite permissions for the file in question), but one has to actively override those limitations.

Since the Web is, a lot of the time, basically a read-only medium with occasional need for limited editing -- and, when done well, it's a primarily textual medium -- the vi interface philosophy turns out to be quite appropriate. If you dislike having to switch interface contexts between keyboard and mouse because you're a touch-typist who has learned the efficiency and power of a keyboard driven interface for text editing, a browser that does the same thing is a very attractive idea.

Unfortunately, most people's experience of text user interface browsers is limited to the shite that has been available for more than a decade, such as the ubiquitous Lynx. While it's entirely keyboard driven, it's not a good TUI. It is, in fact, a crap TUI. Vimperator, however, has managed to improve on the failures of all other TUI Web browsers I've ever seen by importing vi idioms to the context of Web browsing -- improve on it so much that it blows away both TUI and GUI browsers, at least for me.

I also use a window manager with a keyboard driven interface, and I probably do more typing online than the vast majority of Web browser users. With all that in mind, keeping one hand on the keyboard and the other on the mouse would be broken up a lot by having to get my hands back to home row on the keyboard so I could do things like type in the browser, switch workspaces and do work there, and so on. At least 98% of the time, Vimperator obviates the need to keep one hand on the mouse the way you do it, which means there isn't any interface context switching going on in my brain at least 98% of the time for me, whereas without Vimperator I'd spend more like 60% of the time I'm using the Web browser also using a mouse and would have to switch back to home row every time I need to copy text to or from Vim in a terminal emulator (for instance).

Now, the only times I need a mouse in the browser is when I want to do something like click the upvote arrow here at HN or do something in a Flash object (such as start the Flash player, since I use Flashblock).

I used to believe that for the best browsing experience, a mouse was necessary for the majority of uses, because the Web is an inherently graphical medium. Even essentially pure-text pages seemed that way to me, because things like hyperlinks are location-specific. Vimperator has allowed me to learn the error of my reasoning in that regard.

Re: Efficient Editing With vim

#118
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HA! Also using vim will cause your escape key to be heavily hit constantly after typing anything especially if you are not sure what mode you are in, then only realizing you are not in vim period.

ctrl+c is much better than esc :) but I use emacs more than vi[m]

Yeah -- more (keys) is always better!

Oh, wait . . .

Re: Efficient Editing With vim

#119
remapping capslock -> esc will make editing so much easier and faster. being able to easily enter command mode has increased my speed more than anything else, it's also really useful in other interfaces, to be able to quickly hit escape instead of reaching over to the top of the keyboard.

add xmodmap -e 'clear Lock' -e 'keycode 0x42 = Escape' to your ~/.xinitrc on linux

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