The State of Vim

One big question is why presumably "open source" projects still consider in 2025 to be acceptable to be hosted on Github (especially for those with the most important contributors not being USian).

One file worked fine until it didn't. At one point it was 500+ lines and became unwieldy to manage.

Though I might one day switch to Zed or Helix -- I want an editor that has more bells and whistles built-in and that I could just switch them off if I don't want them. Which should be a much smaller configuration footprint compared to what we have today with Neovim.

> his development process did not scale

I hope my development projects fail like Moolenaar's! Vim has been extraordinarily successful for decades, possibly the top 5 or 10 FOSS projects ever (?). Citing Vim as an example of development process failure is really incredible.

(equivalently, if you use screen; the key point is the \eP and the \e\\ between which the real xterm escape codes go, or else screen will eat your escape codes which will never see the light of day)

    augroup term_normal
     au!      
     autocmd WinNew * let w:winnew = 1
     autocmd CmdlineEnter * let w:outcmd = 0
     autocmd CmdlineLeave * let w:outcmd = 1
     autocmd WinEnter * if exists ('w:winnew') | unlet w:winnew | if (mode() == 't') | call Termcursor () | endif | elseif get(w:, 'outcmd', 1) && (mode() == 't') | call feedkeys("\N", "") | endif
     autocmd WinLeave * if (mode() == 't') && (! exists('w:tu')) | call feedkeys("\N", 'x') | call Normalcursor () | elseif (mode(1) == 'nt') && (exists('w:tu')) | call feedkeys("i", 'ix') | endif
    
     tmap   ((mode() == 't') && get(w:, 'outcmd', 1)) ? 'N' : ''
     augroup end
    
    let &t_SI = "\eP\e[6 q\e]12;#FF00DF\\e\\"
    let &t_EI = "\eP\e[2 q\e]12;#FF00DF\\e\\"
    let &t_ti = "\eP\e[4 q\e]12;#FF00DF\\e\\"
    let &t_te = "\eP\e[2 q\e]12;#FF00DF\\e\\"
    let &t_Us = "\eP\e[4:2m\e\\"
    let &t_ds = "\eP\e[4:4m\e\\"
    let &t_Ds = "\eP\e[58:5:3m\e[4:5m\e\\"
    
    function! Normalcursor ()
     let &t_ve ="\eP\e[2 q\e]12;#FF00DF\\e\\" 
     let &t_vi ="\eP\e[2 q\e]12;#FF00DF\\e\\"
     endfunction
    function! Echonormalcursor ()
     call echoraw("\eP\e[2 q\e]12;#FF00DF\\e\\")
     endfunction
    function! Termcursor ()
     let &t_ve ="\eP\e[4 q\e]12;#FF00DF\\e\\"
     let &t_vi ="\eP\e[4 q\e]12;#FF00DF\\e\\"
     endfunction
    function! Echotermcursor ()
     call echoraw("\eP\e[2 q\e]12;#FF00DF\\e\\")
     endfunction
    
    augroup termcursor
     au!
     autocmd ModeChanged *:n* let &t_ve ="\eP\e[2 q\e]12;#FF00DF\\e\\"
     autocmd ModeChanged *:n* let &t_vi ="\eP\e[2 q\e]12;#FF00DF\\e\\"
     autocmd ModeChanged i:* if &t_ve == "" | let &t_ve ="\eP\e[2 q\e]12;#FF00DF\\e\\" | endif
     autocmd ModeChanged i:* if &t_vi == "" | let &t_vi ="\eP\e[2 q\e]12;#FF00DF\\e\\" | endif
     autocmd ModeChanged *:i* let &t_ve =""
     autocmd ModeChanged *:i* let &t_vi =""
     autocmd ModeChanged *:t call echoraw("\eP\e[4 q\e]12;#FF00DF\\e\\")
     autocmd ModeChanged *:t let &t_ve ="\eP\e[4 q\e]12;#FF00DF\\e\\"
     autocmd ModeChanged *:t let &t_vi ="\eP\e[4 q\e]12;#FF00DF\\e\\"
     autocmd ModeChanged t:* call echoraw("\eP\e[2 q\e]12;#FF00DF\\e\\")
     autocmd ModeChanged t:* if (mode(1) != 'ct') | let &t_ve ="\eP\e[2 q\e]12;#FF00DF\\e\\" | endif
     autocmd ModeChanged t:* if (mode(1) != 'ct') | let &t_vi ="\eP\e[2 q\e]12;#FF00DF\\e\\" | endif
     
     " TODO -- doesnt restore from redraw?
     let g:cmdlinedepth = 0
     autocmd CmdlineEnter * let g:cmdlinedepth = g:cmdlinedepth + 1 | let &t_ve = "\eP\e[4 q\e]12;#FF00DF\\e\\" | let &t_vi = "\eP\e[4 q\e]12;#FF00DF\\e\\"
     autocmd CmdlineLeave * let g:cmdlinedepth = g:cmdlinedepth - 1 | if g:cmdlinedepth == 0 | if (mode(1) == 'ct') | call Termcursor () | else | call Normalcursor () | endif | endif
     autocmd CmdwinEnter * let &t_ve ="\eP\e[2 q\e]12;#FF00DF\\e\\" | let &t_vi ="\eP\e[2 q\e]12;#FF00DF\\e\\"
     autocmd CmdwinLeave * let &t_ve = "\eP\e[4 q\e]12;#FF00DF\\e\\" | let &t_vi = "\eP\e[4 q\e]12;#FF00DF\\e\\"
    
     " autocmd WinEnter * call echoraw("\eP\e[2 q\e]12;#FF00DF\\e\\")
     augroup end

Some other things I do:

Invoke terminals on directories (instead of netrw). So, I can e.g. sp. to split to a new terminal.

  function! Isdir(dir) abort
   return !empty(a:dir) && (isdirectory(a:dir) ||
    \ (!empty($SYSTEMDRIVE) && isdirectory('/'..tolower($SYSTEMDRIVE[0])..a:dir)))
   endfunction
  
  augroup terminal-explorer
   au!
   au VimEnter * sil! au! FileExplorer *
   au VimEnter * sil! au! Network *
   au VimEnter * sil! au! AuNetrwEvent *
   " au FileType netrw cd % | bw | exe 'terminal ++curwin'
   au BufEnter * if &filetype != 'netrw' && Isdir(expand('%')) | lcd % | exe bufnr("%") ..'bufdo terminal ++curwin' | endif
   augroup end

Make m close windows instead:

    noremap m c
    noremap! m c
    tnoremap m c

Make p find the next window if there is no previous window:

    noremap   p ':wincmd p  if win_getid () == ' .. win_getid () .. '  wincmd w  endif '
    noremap!   p ':wincmd p  if win_getid () == ' .. win_getid () .. '  wincmd w  endif '
    tnoremap   p ':wincmd p  if win_getid () == ' .. win_getid () .. '  wincmd w  endif '

Use ~. to detach the GNU screen that my vim is running in (I put my vim in a screen with `unbindall` i.e. I use screen merely for keeping my vim alive) (~. is in analogy to the SSH quit keybinding ~.).

    noremap   ~. ':silent !screen -X detach'
    noremap!   ~. ':silent !screen -X detach'
    tnoremap   ~. ':silent !screen -X detach'

With gf and gF, opening files just from a terminal grep is practically more convenient than vim's :grep. For gf in a new tab:

    map   :tab splitgf

With terminal multiplexing in vim, you start getting a lot of buffers. You can consider getting a custom tabline. Other tab management features become more important too. You might expect [count]gt to behave just like gt for [count] times:

    nnoremap  gt '@_' .. ((v:count1 + (tabpagenr () - 1)) % (tabpagenr('$') ) + 1) .. 'gt'

For ease of moving to the last tab:

    nnoremap  g '@_' .. (((v:count == 0) ? tabpagenr ('$') : v:count)) .. 'gt'

To consistently access the gt family of bindings regardless of mode:

    map gt gt
    map gT gT
    map g g
    map! gt gt
    map! gT gT
    map! g g
    tmap gt Ngt
    tmap gT NgT
    tmap g Ng

When you use T a lot to move your windows in to new tabs, you might sometimes want to move them to the previous tab instead of the next one:

    nnoremap   T
    nnoremap  T T:tabm -1

To access these two in any mode consistently:

    map!  
    map! T T
    tmap  N
    tmap T NT

Analogously to gt and gT, sometimes you may want to move your tabs around, or split them:

    function! SSStabmadjust(tabmnum)
     if a:tabmnum  s :tab split
    noremap   t '@_:' .. SSStabmadjust ((v:count1 + (tabpagenr () - 1 )) % (tabpagenr('$') ) + 1) .. 'tabm'
    noremap   T '@_:' .. SSStabmadjust (((- v:count1 + (tabpagenr () - 1 )) % (tabpagenr('$') ) + tabpagenr('$') ) % (tabpagenr('$') ) + 1) .. 'tabm'
    noremap    ':' .. ((v:count == 0) ? "" : SSStabmadjust ((v:count % (tabpagenr ('$') )) )) .. 'tabm'
    map! s s
    map! t t
    map! T T
    map!  
    tmap s Ns
    tmap t Nt
    tmap T NT
    tmap  N