Your Preferred Text Editor

[phatdood9]

I keep moving between vim and sublime text, ST2 vim mode is kinda crappy, ST3 is a bit better, but still crashes all the time.

There is a promising plugin for ST3 that runs vim in the background and uses sublime text as a front end to it, but  its really buggy too

I just cant get used to how primitive the file browser is in vim, even with various plugins like command T

[angelic_sedition]

I keep moving between vim and sublime text, ST2 vim mode is kinda crappy, ST3 is a bit better, but still crashes all the time.

There is a promising plugin for ST3 that runs vim in the background and uses sublime text as a front end to it, but  its really buggy too

I just cant get used to how primitive the file browser is in vim, even with various plugins like command T

I moved back to vim cause st3 just wasn't doing it for me. You tried vintageous? I never had it crash. What is the promising plugin you're talking about?

There are plenty of good plugins for files for vim. If you use gvim, you can use a graphical file manager anyway if you want. I usually open everything from the terminal into gvim and haven't really found a use for things like NERDtree, but what is it that you're trying to accomplish? I've personally found CtrlP to better than command t and the many other alternatives. I usually prefer a system wide program over one that works for only one program (ex: file browser, screenshots, etc.) but between Ctrlp and something like NERDtree or netrw pretty much everything is covered. You can even use the mouse (eek) if you want to. There are other project management plugins too.

[vyshane]

There are plenty of good plugins for files for vim. If you use gvim, you can use a graphical file manager anyway if you want. I usually open everything from the terminal into gvim and haven't really found a use for things like NERDtree, but what is it that you're trying to accomplish? I've personally found CtrlP to better than command t and the many other alternatives. I usually prefer a system wide program over one that works for only one program (ex: file browser, screenshots, etc.) but between Ctrlp and something like NERDtree or netrw pretty much everything is covered. You can even use the mouse (eek) if you want to. There are other project management plugins too.

I've been working with Zend Framework 2 lately and it finally pushed me over the edge. That framework has too many damn nested directories. FuzzyFinder + NERDtree couldn't give me a good workflow. I finally switched to IntelliJ + ideavim. IntelliJ has a Favourites filesystem tree view where I can add specific directories that I can quickly access. Oh and code completion that doesn't suck. I've come to realise that what I really love is Vim's modal editing. Not necessarily the editor itself.

I still use Vim a lot, but I'm also happy with IntelliJ / Android Studio + ideavim, and Xcode + Xvim. I'm certainly not religious about editors vs. IDEs.

[angelic_sedition]

There are plenty of good plugins for files for vim. If you use gvim, you can use a graphical file manager anyway if you want. I usually open everything from the terminal into gvim and haven't really found a use for things like NERDtree, but what is it that you're trying to accomplish? I've personally found CtrlP to better than command t and the many other alternatives. I usually prefer a system wide program over one that works for only one program (ex: file browser, screenshots, etc.) but between Ctrlp and something like NERDtree or netrw pretty much everything is covered. You can even use the mouse (eek) if you want to. There are other project management plugins too.

I've been working with Zend Framework 2 lately and it finally pushed me over the edge. That framework has too many damn nested directories. FuzzyFinder + NERDtree couldn't give me a good workflow. I finally switched to IntelliJ + ideavim. IntelliJ has a Favourites filesystem tree view where I can add specific directories that I can quickly access. Oh and code completion that doesn't suck. I've come to realise that what I really love is Vim's modal editing. Not necessarily the editor itself.

I still use Vim a lot, but I'm also happy with IntelliJ / Android Studio + ideavim, and Xcode + Xvim. I'm certainly not religious about editors vs. IDEs.

FuzzyFinder and NERDtree? Ewe xP A favourites filesystem? You didn't like NERDtree bookmarks for some reason? What plugin were you using for code completion that sucked? Whatever works for you, but I've had no problems dealing with hundreds of directories. I can see how it could get confusing though. I'm looking into unite.vim right now which looks possibly even better than CtrlP.

[vyshane]

I want to be able to bookmark sets of directories on a per-project basis. NERDTree saves bookmarks globally.

I am using YouCompleteMe for code completion, with Git hooks to run ctags.

[tp4tissue]

What's wrong with good ol' ultraedit..

[vyshane]

What's wrong with good ol' ultraedit..

Nothing. Use whatever works for you.

[daerid]

I'm looking into unite.vim right now which looks possibly even better than CtrlP.

ORLY? I love me some CtrlP, if unite is better I'm definitely gonna switch

[nuclearsandwich]

I'm looking into unite.vim right now which looks possibly even better than CtrlP.

ORLY? I love me some CtrlP, if unite is better I'm definitely gonna switch

There's also Gary Berhnhardt's selecta which is a general purpose fuzzy finder that you can use with Vim and whatever else besides.

[angelic_sedition]

I want to be able to bookmark sets of directories on a per-project basis. NERDTree saves bookmarks globally.

I am using YouCompleteMe for code completion, with Git hooks to run ctags.

Hmmm seems kind of inefficient and unnecessary to me, but if you needed to do that it probably would be harder in vim. Most plugins that support bookmarking just have one set. I know vimExplorer allows for favourites and bookmarks, but that's not much help either. You could use multiple plugins, but that would be a terrible solution as well. Maybe one of the bookmarking plugins (bookmarks.vim, vim-cdargs (kind of), FavEx, etc.) supports having multiple folders for bookmarks, but I haven't tested any of them. That or some project management plugin like myprojects. You probably could do it with NERDTree, netrw, etc. by boomarking folders for each project containing symbolic links to the ones you wanted to bookmark. I haven't tested how NERDTree would handle symbolic links to directories, but if this works, setting up the symbolic links could be done very quickly. Seems like a pretty elegant solution to me if it works. It might also be possible to just make a source for unite for each project, but that might be more tedious. I really hate using program specific file managers anyway, so I guess I can't really relate.

You think ycm sucks? Is intellij completion a lot better?

[angelic_sedition]

I'm looking into unite.vim right now which looks possibly even better than CtrlP.

ORLY? I love me some CtrlP, if unite is better I'm definitely gonna switch

I'm not sure if it's worth a switch, but it's definitely an interesting plugin. The documentation is a bit lacking, but it looks like it has a lot of potential (though just out of the box, I like CtrlP a lot more so far). Here's someone who seems to have done some tweaking in that regard: http://eblundell.com/thoughts/2013/08/15/Vim-CtrlP-behaviour-with-Unite.html

Selecta seems interesting as well.

[phatdood9]

I keep moving between vim and sublime text, ST2 vim mode is kinda crappy, ST3 is a bit better, but still crashes all the time.

There is a promising plugin for ST3 that runs vim in the background and uses sublime text as a front end to it, but  its really buggy too

I just cant get used to how primitive the file browser is in vim, even with various plugins like command T

I moved back to vim cause st3 just wasn't doing it for me. You tried vintageous? I never had it crash. What is the promising plugin you're talking about?

There are plenty of good plugins for files for vim. If you use gvim, you can use a graphical file manager anyway if you want. I usually open everything from the terminal into gvim and haven't really found a use for things like NERDtree, but what is it that you're trying to accomplish? I've personally found CtrlP to better than command t and the many other alternatives. I usually prefer a system wide program over one that works for only one program (ex: file browser, screenshots, etc.) but between Ctrlp and something like NERDtree or netrw pretty much everything is covered. You can even use the mouse (eek) if you want to. There are other project management plugins too.

I dunno if it is vintageous, but I get some sort of plugin host crash quite often. I would go from the terminal, but the OS X window management system gives me a lot of grief. I usually have quite a few terminal windows open, and there doesn't seem to be a way to alt tab to a single terminal window (instead of a group). I just feel like I lose my place in the editor really easily if the window keeps on getting covered up.

What's nice for me about sublime is that the file browser gives me a good idea of where I am, and I can do move/rename/copy file info operations with the mouse. I can also have it auto expand when I open a file with the completion dialog. Also nerdtree didn't seem to auto refresh on file change. I suspect that this is all possible in vim though, I've been playing off and on with getting my vimrc set up, but it its still a bit far off.

[hashbaz]

Unite has been making the rounds among vim nerds at my workplace.  I need to check it out still, but it looks pretty cool.

[yakitysax]

I use Vim (7.4) when I am editing a single file, such as a config file. I use emacs (24.3, mainly using evil-mode) for everything else though; the composability of the environment and having all of the source code available all the time is incredibly freeing and empowering; it's fantastic for producing documentation and papers with Org-mode and Auctex. The learning curve of both is brutal though. If I am working with Java code though I use IntelliJ IDEA.

[iri]

i use idea with ideavim plugin. and i see a loooot of room for improving it.

[yakitysax]

i use idea with ideavim plugin. and i see a loooot of room for improving it.

If you read or skim the Vim reference manual sometime, there are a lot of dark corners necessary to really implement Vim's design fully. It's not a trivial undertaking by any means, and if I were doing targeting that I think it would be more efficient to expose my IDE to being used similar to how eclipse is accessible through eclim. Another editing option I see cropping up is embedding Code Mirror within a web view, however it also happens to not have a very good vim emulation.

[yakitysax]

Unless it supports surround.vim, it's worthless.

Evil-mode actually does with the evil-surround extension, quite a few of Tim Pope's extensions are implemented (which is not too surprising as Pope's extensions are pretty brilliant); one thing I noticed whilst writing a new motion was that Pope's repeat.vim extension is unnecessary as new motions/text-objects "just work" or by informing evil-mode of how to handle the new text-object/motion what have you with the :repeat keyword, it grasps how to handle it, which was a really elegant solution.

[iri]

i use idea with ideavim plugin. and i see a loooot of room for improving it.

If you read or skim the Vim reference manual sometime, there are a lot of dark corners necessary to really implement Vim's design fully. It's not a trivial undertaking by any means

for the first time, i'll be heading for trivial things. it's going to give me some street cred anyways.

[Nojo]

Notepad++ here  I like the line color option

[eisenhower]

Vim.

That program is amazing for a long-in-the-tooth text editor. It changed my life.

[mooswa]

Vim.

That program is amazing for a long-in-the-tooth text editor. It changed my life.

^^^ This.

[MonoSky]

Vim + http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized + Penumbra(Soon...)

[hashbaz]

Vim + http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized + Penumbra(Soon...)

Don't forget

[lcs]

I started using vim again...

my fingers are pleased.

[MonoSky]

Wait... What... WHERE!!!

Vim + http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized + Penumbra(Soon...)

Don't forget

Show Image

[lcs]

Wait... What... WHERE!!!

Vim + http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized + Penumbra(Soon...)

Don't forget

Show Image

Here you go: http://techkeys.us/collections/abs/products/vim-key

[daerid]

There's also Gary Berhnhardt's selecta which is a general purpose fuzzy finder that you can use with Vim and whatever else besides.

Funny you mention him, he's the guy that got me into Vim.

[iri]

i need a ctrl-[ keycap then.

[nuclearsandwich]

There's also Gary Berhnhardt's selecta which is a general purpose fuzzy finder that you can use with Vim and whatever else besides.

Funny you mention him, he's the guy that got me into Vim.

I really like his Twitter feed because I don't feel alone in being sad about computers anymore.

[daerid]

yeah, but sometimes he makes me depressed. I wanna be all like "THEN GO BE A MECHANIC YA JACK ASS". But I love the guy.

PS: Got him into the ErgoDox, too. Spreadin' the love! https://twitter.com/garybernhardt/status/369856760367951872

[nuclearsandwich]

yeah, but sometimes he makes me depressed. I wanna be all like "THEN GO BE A MECHANIC YA JACK ASS". But I love the guy.

PS: Got him into the ErgoDox, too. Spreadin' the love! https://twitter.com/garybernhardt/status/369856760367951872

He's been raving about the thing. Kind of hoping he's a secret geekhacker.

[TacticalCoder]

To get an idea as to what a few lines of elisp (a Lisp dialect in which you can program/customize Emacs) can do (with a cool animated .gif):

http://www.bytopia.org/2013/11/26/emacs-saves-the-day-again/

tl;dr  The guy wrote a few elisp lines allowing him to quickly (and visually) classify OCR'ed characters (with full undo capability)

[eisenhower]

For any Mac users looking for a good free text editor akin to notebook++, check out TextWrangler. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/textwrangler/id404010395

[n0rvig]

Unite has been making the rounds among vim nerds at my workplace.  I need to check it out still, but it looks pretty cool.

"I love ctrl-p but it is so last year."

For people that are using an old editor they sure do like the latest plugins.

[hashbaz]

Sure it's "old", but it's still under regular maintenance, and very active plugin development.

[phatdood9]

Vim + http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized + Penumbra(Soon...)

Don't forget

Show Image

I need this key so badly ...

http://www.shapeways.com/model/910406/vim-keycap-for-topre-keyswitches.html

I don't know why he never put it for sale :(

[lcs]

Looks really nice indeed!

I just hate the color.

[phatdood9]

I think its 3d printed, so you can get any color depending on whoever prints it ...

[lcs]

I don't have a topre board XD Was just commenting. But that guy is not selling it right? Nor the design.

[phatdood9]

Yeah, apparently he made both MX and topre versions, but the topre version didn't really fit correctly.

http://deskthority.net/marketplace-f11/engraved-vim-keycap-t5093.html

I hope he can  iron it out or maybe release the source file   

[lcs]

The thread is a bit old :| I don't think it's gonna happen.

I would like a tek key with a vim logo, that'd be nice.

[iri]

i think that using the esc key to go to normal mode in vim is a bad idea. just sayin'. not that anyone cares.

[lcs]

I swapped my ` for esc. Works fine.

[mooswa]

In VIM you can map anything you want to Esc. Currently I map jj to Esc.  I am planning to mod my CM QFR to do Esc on CapsLock single tap.  CapsLock hold+another key will mean Ctrl+key.

[nuclearsandwich]

i think that using the esc key to go to normal mode in vim is a bad idea. just sayin'. not that anyone cares.

Ctrl + o takes you out of insert mode by default as well.

I've mapped jk and kj to return to normal mode since they don't appear together commonly in US English or code. This has lead to the rather unfortunate habit of noodling kjkjkjkjkkj whenever I'm thinking because it's essentially a noop now.

[lcs]

In VIM you can map anything you want to Esc. Currently I map jj to Esc.  I am planning to mod my CM QFR to do Esc on CapsLock single tap.  CapsLock hold+another key will mean Ctrl+key.

That is a really nice idea! Thank you XD

[hashbaz]

I had Caps Lock mapped to Esc for years.

[iri]

i think that using the esc key to go to normal mode in vim is a bad idea. just sayin'. not that anyone cares.

Ctrl + o takes you out of insert mode by default as well.

for one command. C-[ acts just like the esc key.

[phatdood9]

As others have said, its common to 'imap' jj or something similar to escape (I use 'jk' myself)

If you use the program keyremap4macbook (I think that is what its called) you can do the following:

bind caps lock to ctrl (skip if you have hardware hhkb)
search for "Control_L to Control_L" in the program, there is a setting that, when toggled, will send esc on key up if no other keys were pressed, or normal ctrl when pressed with any other keys.

I use this on my macbook, caps lock is much easier to access than control.

[rowdy]

For any Mac users looking for a good free text editor akin to notebook++, check out TextWrangler. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/textwrangler/id404010395

Already using it

I had Caps Lock mapped to Esc for years.

Esc Lock )