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Just Use Sublime Text

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Re: Just Use Sublime Text

#241

Post by smalltalk »

ths wrote: post #63
jcoder wrote: post #19

"The Editor You Need To Read (At Least) Two Books On To Use Well" Read :help. I haven't read any books on Vim so I'm not sure if there are any good ones, but you most definitely do not "need" to read one. "The point of a mouse is to make arbitrary on screen jumps efficient, and it’s very good at doing that. Don’t you ever think you can beat a mouse. Only in very few edge cases will it even matter." That's kind of rid…

Even if the mouse were quicker on average for long jumps, the moving of the hand from mouse to keyboard feels like more of a combo breaker, more distracting. Speed is very important, but equally important is for the editing experience to have a low attention footprint to leave more space for the train of thought behind the changes being made.

In fact, it's the opposite. Using keyboard commands for movement is more distracting (and measurably slower) than using the mouse. It is precisely that the mouse is less distracting that tricks the mind into thinking the keyboard is faster. See AskTog:

http://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html

http://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi22KeyboardVMouse2.html

http://www.asktog.com/SunWorldColumns/S02KeyboardVMouse3.htm...

[If you think this is incorrect, providing links to scientific evidence is more productive than downvoting or stating that your own subjective experience is different.]

Re: Just Use Sublime Text

#242

Post by jezclaremurugan »

The trick is to learn to use vim commands as a language, there was a wonderful SO reply long back which described this neatly... once you master that, then the all the text in the world is yours to command

EDIT - got it http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1218390/what-is-your-most...

also http://stackoverflow.com/questions/726894/what-are-the-dark-...

Re: Just Use Sublime Text

#243

Post by jcoder »

smalltalk wrote: post #241
ths wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the mouse were quicker on average for long jumps, the moving of the hand from mouse to keyboard feels like more of a combo breaker, more distracting. Speed is very important, but equally important is for the editing experience to have a low attention footprint to leave more space for the train of thought behind the changes being made.

In fact, it's the opposite. Using keyboard commands for movement is more distracting (and measurably slower) than using the mouse. It is precisely that the mouse is less distracting that tricks the mind into thinking the keyboard is faster. See AskTog: http://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html http://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi22KeyboardVMouse2.html http://www.asktog.com/SunWorldColumns/S02KeyboardVMouse3.htm...…

We can each run that experiment 100 times in a few minutes. I did, keyboard movements were faster. https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-authority

EDIT: not sure why the downvotes—should I have said "faster FOR ME"? Anyways, hi haters.

Re: Just Use Sublime Text

#244

Post by gnuvince »

catenate wrote: post #72
msutherl wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As somebody who recently switched from Vim to SublimeText, I agree and disagree with much in the article, but the point about the mouse is interesting. For years I believed that eschewing the mouse was speeding me up. But I recently had the pleasure of working with a fine gentleman, and a SublimeText user, who is an absolute fiend with the mouse. He has considerably more development experience than I, so it is not an…

In my experience (11 years with Emacs, then 8 years with Wily/Acme-SAC/Acme) using the mouse is much more efficient than typing to move the cursor and select text. Acme takes it a step further by binding cut and paste to mouse chords. Guide files are the big win, though, since I edit and reissue commands (highlight and middle-click) instead of retyping them.

I tried Acme, and though it had some good ideas, I found that the execution was sometimes poor. I especially disliked that so much emphasis was put on the mouse with no way to fall back to the keyboard.

Re: Just Use Sublime Text

#245

Post by TallboyOne »

smalltalk wrote: post #233
TallboyOne wrote: post #69

These articles are just idiotic. Mouse as fast as the keyboard except a 'few edge cases'? Get out of here. Vim destroys using a mouse every day of the week, and unless the highest skillset you've learned is fingerpainting, it's not that hard. Sit down for 2 days, stop being a bitch, learn the keybindings, and you're good.

Using the keyboard seems faster than using a mouse to move the cursor because you're thinking so hard about what to do with the keyboard that you forget the time it takes to get what you want accomplished, but using the keyboard is objectively, measurably slower than using the mouse for the same task; in other words, using the mouse is actually proven to be faster for cursor movement overall. You're just fooled by yo…

You've just invalidated your argument by implying you need to think 'hard' about it. I certainly don't have to think about it. The entire point is the make everything 100% muscle memory.

Every time a vim vs sublime article comes out, all the failed vim users who tried for 2 hours come out of the woodwork to comfort their own shortcomings on not following through with a tool that objectively blows away a single mode editor.

You can't deny it, it just cant be done. The one exception is if you're a slow typer. By typing close to 110wpm I can type /exvi" even before your fat meat sticks reach the mouse, and I've already accomplished it, pasted it, and am moving it on while youre fighting with putting the cursor right between the e and the "

Re: Just Use Sublime Text

#246

Post by jamesrcole »

smalltalk wrote: post #240
jamesrcole wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vanilla Vim is pretty sub-optimal for writing prose. Vim is my text-editor of choice, but it took me a lot of time and effort to customise it to make it more suitable for writing prose. E.g. the fact that it scrolls by logical lines rather than screen lines (note I that I said scrolls . I'm aware that you can navigate by screen lines by using gj and gk). The way this makes the text scroll by unpredictable amounts whe…

How have you customized Vim to make it suitable for writing text that doesn't have a line break every 50 characters or so?

Primarily by having these in my .vimrc:

    autocmd FileType text set textwidth=75
    
    autocmd FileType text set formatoptions+=a

    autocmd FileType text set formatoptions+=w
explanation:

- formatoptions+=a: auto-format as you insert text, which means it will (basically) automatically insert a newline once you've typed 'textwidth' number of characters on your line. it will insert a newline while you are typing.

- formatoptions+=w: this isn't necessary, but it has an effect on the way the auto-formatting is done. i find the 'w' options more convenient. With 'w', a linebreak means a new paragraph, unless trailing whitespace at end of line. It means that the 'a' option doesn't auto join lines separated by a linebreak.

- if you're not familiar with Vim's autocmds, what they're doing in the above definitions is setting those options for any text files that are opened (and only text files).

I've also setup Taglist http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=273 so that it can show a listing of the markdown headings in my document.

[EDIT: added brief explanation of autocmds]

Re: Just Use Sublime Text

#247

Post by jamesrcole »

pekk wrote: post #188
jamesrcole wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vanilla Vim is pretty sub-optimal for writing prose. Vim is my text-editor of choice, but it took me a lot of time and effort to customise it to make it more suitable for writing prose. E.g. the fact that it scrolls by logical lines rather than screen lines (note I that I said scrolls . I'm aware that you can navigate by screen lines by using gj and gk). The way this makes the text scroll by unpredictable amounts whe…

When you say prose, do you mean emails or some document format or what?

I mean text written in sentences, as opposed to code (or files relating to code, such as configuration files).

For me this is primarily my planning/diary file and the phd documents I'm writing.

Re: Just Use Sublime Text

#248

Post by shurcooL »

Cyykratahk wrote: post #103
shurcooL wrote: post #26

> Vim is Oddly Bad at Indenting Since he mentioned indenting, let me ask: how do you properly indent JSON or XML in Sublime Text 2 out of the box? I've tried setting the appropriate syntax, selecting all text, then doing Edit->Line->Reindent but it gives half-broken results. Is that intentional, or am I doing something wrong? Also, is there a way to quickly select all instances of currently selected identifier within…

Ctrl+D to select the next instance of the current selection.

Thanks, this is the best I've found. But it doesn't select all the instances within local scope (which happen to be highlighted, so it's not stretch to imagine being able to select them all), you end up having to do it manually by starting with the first entry and then carefully select all others that still fall within the local scope.

Isn't it a pretty common thing to rename local variables? I'm not sure why it's not a readily available feature.

Re: Just Use Sublime Text

#249

Post by MetaCosm »

pekk wrote: post #185
MetaCosm wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He tried to turn vim into an IDE, a role that vim specifically decided not to embrace, that will make anyone go a little crazy. Vim is good at editing text, is extremely portable, and works great with a partner in crime like tmux. I have used vim for 12+ years, and the complexity of his setup makes me a bit dizzy.

There is nothing wrong with using vim's intentionally built in extension mechanisms.

There is nothing wrong with using them, except that (as the article points out) they don't work terribly well, take a lot of effort to get right, and aren't the focus of the editor.

Sublime and Emacs are joys to extend versus Vim, that doesn't mean it can't be done, just that it is tough.

Re: Just Use Sublime Text

#250

Post by smalltalk »

TallboyOne wrote: post #245
smalltalk wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using the keyboard seems faster than using a mouse to move the cursor because you're thinking so hard about what to do with the keyboard that you forget the time it takes to get what you want accomplished, but using the keyboard is objectively, measurably slower than using the mouse for the same task; in other words, using the mouse is actually proven to be faster for cursor movement overall. You're just fooled by yo…

You've just invalidated your argument by implying you need to think 'hard' about it. I certainly don't have to think about it. The entire point is the make everything 100% muscle memory. Every time a vim vs sublime article comes out, all the failed vim users who tried for 2 hours come out of the woodwork to comfort their own shortcomings on not following through with a tool that objectively blows away a single mode e…

The "hard" thinking is subconscious: you don't know you're doing it and you "forget" how long it takes, which is why you perceive the keyboard as faster. Read the article. I know it's difficult to let go of subjective impressions, but the stopwatch is always right compared to our own internal sense of time.
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