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The problem with vim

haldean.org

71–80 of 90 posts

Re: The problem with vim

#71

I switched from emacs to vim a few years ago. One of them is that vim is actually closer to a windows/mac style editor than emacs is. You can navigate with the arrow keys, you just need keep track of being in insert mode or not. The things that are different are sufficiently different that you won't cross them up. Back in the emacs days I was always typing ^X^S into word or typing ^S in emacs when I want to save.

You can navigate Emacs with the arrow keys, too. (But C-v and M-v are much more pleasant to use.)

But the \ at the end of lines screws up cut-and-paste in emacs. I can cut and paste between vim running in putty and most other apps.

Re: The problem with vim

#72
post #62
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the extra stuff that makes vim more than just a vi clone. Everything from built in stuff like the auto-completion to plugins like syntastic. Everything technically works, but never nicely and I always end up frustrated with the warts and just go back to plain vi. I should give emacs a shot, I've heard evil is supposed to be a better vi than vim.

Other editors/IDEs you are using with vi-mode plugins also have extra stuff that make them more than just a vi clone, from built in stuff like auto-completion to syntax checking plugins. etc.

Of course, I want those things, that's the whole reason for trying to switch from vi. I just want those things to actually work smoothly and together, rather than being a mess of plugins that sorta work sometimes but have lots of ugly warts and don't play nicely together,

Re: The problem with vim

#73

Most of these vim emulators are open source, so there's always the chance to just fix it and do a pull request. The main two vim emulators that I am using are: - XVim for XCode - Evil for Emacs And both do a really good job. Evil beats XVim hands down, but XVim is a lot better than the others I tried: IdeaVim (for Intellij), Vrapper (Vim for Eclipse), and Vintage (Vim for Sublime). Out of these, vintage is by far the…

I did a bunch of work for XVim a while back. The owner is really friendly and very welcoming of contributions, so if anyone wants to pitch in you'll find it worthwhile. When I first looked at XVim the code was a little disorganised. It was possible to fix it up with some fairly massive refactorings, and they were all warmly welcomed.

Once I switched to AppCode I thought I'd do the same for IdeaVim, but the code base is such an unholy affront to the gods that I gave that idea up.

Unfortunately, much like the author, my conclusion was to empty out my vimrc and start using a minimal subset that is definitely supported on all platforms. It's a real bummer, but it's definitely better than not using killer vim + IDE combinations.

Re: The problem with vim

#74

Most of these vim emulators are open source, so there's always the chance to just fix it and do a pull request. The main two vim emulators that I am using are: - XVim for XCode - Evil for Emacs And both do a really good job. Evil beats XVim hands down, but XVim is a lot better than the others I tried: IdeaVim (for Intellij), Vrapper (Vim for Eclipse), and Vintage (Vim for Sublime). Out of these, vintage is by far the…

> "libVim" I think it would be better for developers to allow their programs to launch external editors. That way users can pick whichever editor they like. All the developer has to do is create a temporary file, run a command to open it, and watch for changes. (Thanks to vimperator, I am using vim to write this.)

That would not enable you to use editor features like autocompletion, context awareness, etc. Now, you could also implement them in the external editors, but then you'd be at step one again and re-implement an IDE in vim.

Re: The problem with vim

#75
post #28

I never considered using vim because the navigation is based on a query layout, which I don't use. It didn't seem worth the effort to try and re-bind the keys to make more sense. With emacs, the key bindings sort of make sense (f-orward, b-ack) (n-ext p-revious) for the right-left-down-up. Not sure why v is for page down/up, but it seems to have stuck.

I use Colemak and vim. I used to rebind the keys but it's not worth it since you have to redo it for every emulator (and some of them don't support remapping).

Since vim is mnemonic rather than ergonomic everything works great in standard Colemak - except hjkl.

Re: The problem with vim

#76

Most of these vim emulators are open source, so there's always the chance to just fix it and do a pull request. The main two vim emulators that I am using are: - XVim for XCode - Evil for Emacs And both do a really good job. Evil beats XVim hands down, but XVim is a lot better than the others I tried: IdeaVim (for Intellij), Vrapper (Vim for Eclipse), and Vintage (Vim for Sublime). Out of these, vintage is by far the…

I agree that Vintage is pretty useless.

I would recommend Vintageous[1] which has implemented far more bindings. Although annoyingly, it does not have :w, which I use quite often.

[1] https://github.com/guillermooo/Vintageous

Re: The problem with vim

#77
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can run Kate in vim mode. So what happens when other text editors become vim?

"Vim mode" in applications is rarely complete. It's enough to get by if you're doing a simple one off thing but it's no way to live.

Using Vim mode in other editors is like replacing all your silverware with only spoons. It's much nicer, shinier silverware, and everything's going great at first, until I subconsciously reach for a knife.

Re: The problem with vim

#78
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Vim mode" in applications is rarely complete. It's enough to get by if you're doing a simple one off thing but it's no way to live.

Using Vim mode in other editors is like replacing all your silverware with only spoons. It's much nicer, shinier silverware, and everything's going great at first, until I subconsciously reach for a knife.

Isn't it ironic. Sorry I kid I kid. Yes spot on that's exactly what it feels like.

Re: The problem with vim

#79
post #48

If you are using vim with C# I highly recommend OmniSharp - https://github.com/nosami/Omnisharp It provides real intellisense, find usages, etc. It's based on NRefactory.

Thanks for this. It looks really handy.

Re: The problem with vim

#80
post #23

On the other hand VsVim for Visual Studio ( https://github.com/jaredpar/VsVim/ ) is pretty good done and have many of the full Vim functionalities. I use it on daily basis and it feels almost as full Vim. It lacks in support for plugins and many fancy settings but provides all the movements and register operations I use regularly in full Vim. What is important it is fully open sourced and its maintainer makes pretty…

It's pretty excellent, but it has the same issue as any other vim-emulator. It's missing some keybindings that break my concentration. In VsVim's case specifically "cit"
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