Any VIM-love here on GH?

[iLLucionist]

Any love for VIM? Care to share your favorite VimL / Vimrc hacks? Preferences for kb's for coding? Favorite plugins?

[lishi]

I wish I could vim


I remember seeing one of my friends use it in uni and it was ridiculous. You know that gif of "hacking in progress" that's what she looked like. So impressive

[iLLucionist]

I wish I could vim


I remember seeing one of my friends use it in uni and it was ridiculous. You know that gif of "hacking in progress" that's what she looked like. So impressive

There are not *that* many basic keys to learn. It requires you to memorize them, of course, but it took me a week or two of full dedication back in the days.. There is a fairly straight-forward book about vim as well by O'Reilly.. "Learning the Vi and Vim Editors".

Some people really go wild with their vimrc and plugins (I am guilty of that as well), but in the beginning when you master basic navigation and editing.. a whole new world opens in front of you. Then you can proceed with plugins, of which there are many. For instance, I have a plugin for GIT so that I can work with my code repositories instantly.

[CSCoder4ever]

I use Vim as my quick go to editor,
Although I am more of an emacs guy 

[UsualSuspectXXX]

Depends on what I'm doing. When I was doing mostly c programming I used VIM exclusively. Now that I'm a SalesForce developer, Sublime is my goto.

[iLLucionist]

I use Vim as my quick go to editor,
Although I am more of an emacs guy 

Just curious.. what do you think of emacs? What does it provide you with that vim doesn't? Although I'm a real vimmer, I'm thinking of giving emacs a try as well.

[Liocer]

Vim is my go to editor, no mouse required

[Giorgio]

VIM is the best editor available, for text editing or for code. I love it so much that I installed the vimfx addon on firefox (there are many other vim addons, but this is the most reliable).

In vim, you need to add the persistent undo function (keeps undo on a file).

[iLLucionist]

Vim is my go to editor, no mouse required

I can avoid the mouse entirely for systems programming, but I also do webdev and than I have to use my mouse unfortunately.
I did enable mouse mode in vim thought, useful in places.

[iLLucionist]

VIM is the best editor available, for text editing or for code. I love it so much that I installed the vimfx addon on firefox (there are many other vim addons, but this is the most reliable).

In vim, you need to add the persistent undo function (keeps undo on a file).

Persistent undo is awesome, using it myself as well. I also have YankRing for to work with registers more easily. Very handy if you are refactoring or restructuring your code and moving code around files.

I also use RStudio and I hated it until I found they have a vim mode as well. Now it is mostly bearable.

[iri]

Vim is my go to editor, no mouse required

I can avoid the mouse entirely for systems programming

What is "systems programming"?

[iLLucionist]

Vim is my go to editor, no mouse required

I can avoid the mouse entirely for systems programming

What is "systems programming"?

Basically, software not intended to be used by end-users directly but to be used by other apps and/or developers. For instance, libraries and frameworks could be seen as systems programming.

I often work on research tools (mostly python) that usually take some input (datasets), transforms them to some format and apply some calculations and output it to be used in some other software. For instance, I am generating this report generator that generates intermediate data from a participant's raw scores on a test and that intermediate data is then used by other tools to generate a pdf from.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_programming

[Liocer]

VIM is the best editor available, for text editing or for code. I love it so much that I installed the vimfx addon on firefox (there are many other vim addons, but this is the most reliable).

In vim, you need to add the persistent undo function (keeps undo on a file).

Persistent undo is awesome, using it myself as well. I also have YankRing for to work with registers more easily. Very handy if you are refactoring or restructuring your code and moving code around files.

I also use RStudio and I hated it until I found they have a vim mode as well. Now it is mostly bearable.

I'm a fulltime web dev so I spend time on websites too, mostly I can still get away without using a mouse a lot of the time, what with Vimmium for Chrome.

[CSCoder4ever]

I use Vim as my quick go to editor,
Although I am more of an emacs guy 

Just curious.. what do you think of emacs? What does it provide you with that vim doesn't? Although I'm a real vimmer, I'm thinking of giving emacs a try as well.

One advice I was given was, choose an editor and run with it! So I chose emacs. And I think it's the bees knees!
Although while that advice was given, I would definitely suggest learning the basics of the other editor 

[shinigamiyuk]

I use Vim anytime I have to use a text editor. I don't have any hacks but I use Python-Mode which has the necessary plugins I feel appropriate to make my code efficient.

[n__dles]

what do you think of emacs? What does it provide you with that vim doesn't? Although I'm a real vimmer, I'm thinking of giving emacs a try as well.

In short: lots. Also vim's future isn't very secure.

You can use evil mode for vim compatibility layer in emacs, so switch now, many vi users already have.

[hoosieree]

Self-professed "advanced" Vim user here.  Not expert, but I've written a couple small plugins. 

Vim-plug was my favorite plugin in Vim, but recently I've had to work on machines where it's impractical to customize the system's Vim, so I got rid of all my plugins and downsized my .vimrc.

I still use Vim about 25% of the time, for small tasks (quick edit then back to the shell).  For the rest I use Spacemacs.  I tried vanilla Emacs and hated it.  Then Emacs + evil-mode + (tons of configuration) which was almost perfect.  Spacemacs is my Goldilocks.  It's about 95% perfect for me.  My main complaints are:

* Steeper learning curve than vanilla Emacs
* Slower startup time than Vim

But these complaints are minor.  I'd recommend it to anyone who likes Vim but wants to do more with it.

My .vimrc is much smaller than it used to be: https://github.com/hoosierEE/dotfiles/blob/master/vim/.vimrc  I use Vimium on Chrome.  Wish it worked with Chrome's PDF viewer.

[iLLucionist]

what do you think of emacs? What does it provide you with that vim doesn't? Although I'm a real vimmer, I'm thinking of giving emacs a try as well.

In short: lots. Also vim's future isn't very secure.

You can use evil mode for vim compatibility layer in emacs, so switch now, many vi users already have.

And in long? What does emacs bring me that vim doesn't (aside from elisp)? Why would the future of vim not be secure, especially now that neovim is getting on track.. Just curious about why you prefer emacs, what it has that it makes you want to use it.

[iLLucionist]

Self-professed "advanced" Vim user here.  Not expert, but I've written a couple small plugins. 

Vim-plug was my favorite plugin in Vim, but recently I've had to work on machines where it's impractical to customize the system's Vim, so I got rid of all my plugins and downsized my .vimrc.

I still use Vim about 25% of the time, for small tasks (quick edit then back to the shell).  For the rest I use Spacemacs.  I tried vanilla Emacs and hated it.  Then Emacs + evil-mode + (tons of configuration) which was almost perfect.  Spacemacs is my Goldilocks.  It's about 95% perfect for me.  My main complaints are:

* Steeper learning curve than vanilla Emacs
* Slower startup time than Vim

But these complaints are minor.  I'd recommend it to anyone who likes Vim but wants to do more with it.

My .vimrc is much smaller than it used to be: https://github.com/hoosierEE/dotfiles/blob/master/vim/.vimrc  I use Vimium on Chrome.  Wish it worked with Chrome's PDF viewer.

Wow.. your vimrc is tiny. Why did you make the switch ti *macs? What does it provide you with? I am curious about elisp though and the emacs-is-an-os spirit (like plugins for almost everything you could think of, even facebook and spotify). But I could barely imaging going modeless and I read across places that evil-mode does not work with all plugins.

[lmorchard]

In short: lots. Also vim's future isn't very secure.

You can use evil mode for vim compatibility layer in emacs, so switch now, many vi users already have.

That's like saying the future of mechanical keyboards isn't secure.

Vim development could die out today and I'd still have the source code to the editor I've been using for over 20 years on devices large & small.

You can go ahead and love emacs, it's a fine editor with a different philosophy. You don't have to spread FUD to justify what you like, though.

[lmorchard]

Just curious.. what do you think of emacs? What does it provide you with that vim doesn't? Although I'm a real vimmer, I'm thinking of giving emacs a try as well.

I used to be an emacs fanatic, then switched to vim. I like both, but I stuck with the latter.

Emacs is powerful. It's very programmable, if you want to learn lisp - which IMO every programmer should, at some point. It has a long history of various things being embedded in it - web browsers and mail readers and everything you could imagine needing in a development environment. The usual joke is that you could just boot your computer up into emacs and not miss anything.

Vim is powerful, too. But, I don't like scripting for it as much as emacs. I get more out of combining it with other tools. It's also incredibly obscure and requires practice & learning to get all the commands. It's like playing an RPG where you level up through learning new spells.

Vim (or the lesser vi) is also often found in linux devices & environments where emacs might not. For example, the first time I had a shell on an early Android device, I could use vim to poke at things. It's always been nice to have vim available in low-memory & low-bandwidth situations and find that I'm just as productive as I was on a full desktop. Really ages me, but I remember doing Comp Sci homework over a 2400 bps modem happily with vim. These days, I mostly find it coming in handy on remote VMs and such for quick troubleshooting.

[iLLucionist]

Just curious.. what do you think of emacs? What does it provide you with that vim doesn't? Although I'm a real vimmer, I'm thinking of giving emacs a try as well.

I used to be an emacs fanatic, then switched to vim. I like both, but I stuck with the latter.

Emacs is powerful. It's very programmable, if you want to learn lisp - which IMO every programmer should, at some point. It has a long history of various things being embedded in it - web browsers and mail readers and everything you could imagine needing in a development environment. The usual joke is that you could just boot your computer up into emacs and not miss anything.

Vim is powerful, too. But, I don't like scripting for it as much as emacs. I get more out of combining it with other tools. It's also incredibly obscure and requires practice & learning to get all the commands. It's like playing an RPG where you level up through learning new spells.

Vim (or the lesser vi) is also often found in linux devices & environments where emacs might not. For example, the first time I had a shell on an early Android device, I could use vim to poke at things. It's always been nice to have vim available in low-memory & low-bandwidth situations and find that I'm just as productive as I was on a full desktop. Really ages me, but I remember doing Comp Sci homework over a 2400 bps modem happily with vim. These days, I mostly find it coming in handy on remote VMs and such for quick troubleshooting.

Sounds interesting to try emacs, but I am fairly proficient with vim and I don't think I can stand another dip in my productivity again before I get up to speed. Yeah, I have tried LISP couple of years ago for fun. A really really nice language and also completely different from everything else.

Emacs-as-an-os sounds really intriguing.. (almost) never having to leave your editor. There are still so many instances I have to leave tmux/vim.. still trying to keep everything with vim, but not always easy to do so (like, for instance, a proper spotify and soundcloud client in vim, reading e-mail and mailing lists from within vim).

[KRKS]

As much as I don't mind working in the command line(especially if something uses curses), I still mostly use Geany because I got it to fit me perfectly with just two or three small tweaks, and I'm too lazy to config either Emacs or vim to work like that. However I've been trying out suckless and suckless-inspired stuff, and that includes vis(to quote the readme: "80% of vim's features implemented in roughly 1% of the code"), so I may give that a try.

[n__dles]

vim's future isn't very secure.

That's like saying the future of mechanical keyboards isn't secure.

Not a very good comparison. Saying a specific model of keyboard's future isn't secure would be more accurate.

Vim development could die out today and I'd still have the source code to the editor I've been using for over 20 years on devices large & small.

If vim development dies out today then, by definition, vim doesn't have a future. I didn't say that someone was going to delete all copies.

It's always been nice to have vim available in low-memory & low-bandwidth situations

Eight Megs And Constantly Swapping!

I remember doing Comp Sci homework over a 2400 bps modem happily with vim. These days, I mostly find it coming in handy on remote VMs and such for quick troubleshooting.

You've mentioned bandwidth twice explicitly and again implicitly. If the remote machine is capable of running the editor, why does connection matter? You must not have done the homework for Amdahl's law.

Also, welcome to the forums!

Why would the future of vim not be secure, especially now that neovim is getting on track.

Neovim isn't good for vim's future. I think people might be confusing vim with vi clones.

There's been concern over vim's governance. Bram inspects and pull each patch himself, there's no hierarchy, he's named no successor.

Problems:

• apparently (not surprisingly) development is slow
• what happens if he get by a bus?

There are still so many instances I have to leave tmux/vim.. still trying to keep everything with vim

You can effectively never leave emacs now.

[iLLucionist]

Why would the future of vim not be secure, especially now that neovim is getting on track.

Neovim isn't good for vim's future. I think people might be confusing vim with vi clones.

There's been concern over vim's governance. Bram inspects and pull each patch himself, there's no hierarchy, he's named no successor.

Problems:

• apparently (not surprisingly) development is slow
• what happens if he get by a bus?

There are still so many instances I have to leave tmux/vim.. still trying to keep everything with vim

You can effectively never leave emacs now.

Well, you have a point there. But it got me thinking.. I think if Bram would pass away development would actually speed UP. Look at neovim: it already has concurrency and some other built-in stuff that Bram doesn't want to deal with. Bram also doesn't want to clean up legacy code.

I guess that unless neovim gets traction, vim may get antiquated sooner or later. And yes, ironically, neovim people are building a "vim-clone" as vim was to vi and other vi-clones.

Funny how history can repeat itself.

Still... I could give evil-mode or god-mode a try, but a modeless text-editor would freak me out.

[Giorgio]

Bram has named no successor.
The queen has named no successor. In America they speak English, there is a place named new england. Surely people confuse them.
Linus has named no successor.

So: vim, England and Linux are all gonna die.

[CSCoder4ever]

One thing I don't get though is... Why isn't mg more common? It's the default editor of OpenBSD. 

Bram has named no successor.
The queen has named no successor. In America they speak English, there is a place named new england. Surely people confuse them.
Linus has named no successor.

So: vim, England and Linux are all gonna die.

If linux actually does die, there's always the BSDs 

[n__dles]

Bram has named no successor.
The queen has named no successor. In America they speak English, there is a place named new england. Surely people confuse them.
Linus has named no successor.

So: vim, England and Linux are all gonna die.

What's with all the strawmen?

But yes, you're right,*all* things are going to die.

vim's death is more than likely the first.
Linux will almost certainly survive Linus's death, partially because there's already a system of governance in place.
England won't die if it's Queen and/or monarchy die. Well countries are an abstract idea, so I suppose in the strictest sense it could. In your mind did France die with the French Revolution?

[iLLucionist]

Bram has named no successor.
The queen has named no successor. In America they speak English, there is a place named new england. Surely people confuse them.
Linus has named no successor.

So: vim, England and Linux are all gonna die.

What's with all the strawmen?

But yes, you're right,*all* things are going to die.

vim's death is more than likely the first.
Linux will almost certainly survive Linus's death, partially because there's already a system of governance in place.
England won't die if it's Queen and/or monarchy die. Well countries are an abstract idea, so I suppose in the strictest sense it could. In your mind did France die with the French Revolution?

Wait what... is vim a country??

[Giorgio]

Bram has named no successor.
The queen has named no successor. In America they speak English, there is a place named new england. Surely people confuse them.
Linus has named no successor.

So: vim, England and Linux are all gonna die.

What's with all the strawmen?

But yes, you're right,*all* things are going to die.

vim's death is more than likely the first.
Linux will almost certainly survive Linus's death, partially because there's already a system of governance in place.
England won't die if it's Queen and/or monarchy die. Well countries are an abstract idea, so I suppose in the strictest sense it could. In your mind did France die with the French Revolution?

Wait what... is vim a country??

Wait. And a state of perception is a no man land? What kind of sorcery is this. What have you done to us?!!

[n__dles]

Wait. And a state of perception is a no man land? What kind of sorcery is this. What have you done to us?!!

From the mind of Giorgio, formerly Gianni, in a thread about text editors in a keyboard forum 

[hashbaz]

vim is great, I use it as my main workhorse every day. But it's old and crusty. Personally I'd happily jump ship to a more modern editor that gave me the same power and editing model. I've spent time with emacs but it hasn't grabbed me in the same way that vim did.

I'm hopeful that neovim will grow into the modern, powerful editor we deserve. If not, the open-source community at large will step up at some point and create a worthy successor. I actually considered starting such a project several years ago, and since that time we've seen a lot of new development in the text editor space. Seems to be part of the software dev zeitgeist.

[hoosieree]

Wow.. your vimrc is tiny. Why did you make the switch ti *macs? What does it provide you with? I am curious about elisp though and the emacs-is-an-os spirit (like plugins for almost everything you could think of, even facebook and spotify). But I could barely imaging going modeless and I read across places that evil-mode does not work with all plugins.

My vimrc used to be about 230 lines, ~25 of which loaded plugins.  Pared down, it more closely resembles the configuration in the various machines I SSH into from time to time, and eases the transition for me.

What drew me to Emacs is REPL integration.  It's true you can make it work in Vim with Tmux and plugins etc, but it fights you every step of the way.  I remember at one point I hacked a plugin specifically for the purpose of making two other plugins play nice with each other.  But plain Emacs was just too much of a chore to learn.  Evil-mode helps, but it has just enough edge cases to be frustrating.  So I kept coming back to Vim, warts and all, because the modal editing is so good.

...Until I discovered Spacemacs.  Modal editing, plus lots of other goodies (fuzzy finder, shell, git, ...) either built-in, or configured pretty much how I like them by default.

Put another way: I only added about 15 lines to the default .spacemacs file, and that was enough to replicate most of 230 lines of vimrc and hand-chosen plugins.

[hashbaz]

What drew me to Emacs is REPL integration.  It's true you can make it work in Vim with Tmux and plugins etc, but it fights you every step of the way.

Yeah this is true. Integration with other tools is probably the most significant of vim's weak points.

Evil-mode helps, but it has just enough edge cases to be frustrating.  So I kept coming back to Vim, warts and all, because the modal editing is so good.

...Until I discovered Spacemacs.  Modal editing, plus lots of other goodies (fuzzy finder, shell, git, ...) either built-in, or configured pretty much how I like them by default.

Interesting, I'll have to give spacemacs a try. I've tried a bunch of vi emulation things in various editors (including evil in emacs), and none of them were ever good enough, due to frustrating edge cases as you said.  )

[iLLucionist]

Wow.. your vimrc is tiny. Why did you make the switch ti *macs? What does it provide you with? I am curious about elisp though and the emacs-is-an-os spirit (like plugins for almost everything you could think of, even facebook and spotify). But I could barely imaging going modeless and I read across places that evil-mode does not work with all plugins.

My vimrc used to be about 230 lines, ~25 of which loaded plugins.  Pared down, it more closely resembles the configuration in the various machines I SSH into from time to time, and eases the transition for me.

What drew me to Emacs is REPL integration.  It's true you can make it work in Vim with Tmux and plugins etc, but it fights you every step of the way.  I remember at one point I hacked a plugin specifically for the purpose of making two other plugins play nice with each other.  But plain Emacs was just too much of a chore to learn.  Evil-mode helps, but it has just enough edge cases to be frustrating.  So I kept coming back to Vim, warts and all, because the modal editing is so good.

...Until I discovered Spacemacs.  Modal editing, plus lots of other goodies (fuzzy finder, shell, git, ...) either built-in, or configured pretty much how I like them by default.

Put another way: I only added about 15 lines to the default .spacemacs file, and that was enough to replicate most of 230 lines of vimrc and hand-chosen plugins.

Yeah, I use R a lot and for that I use RStudio, which - of course - provides a REPL. I've read about an R mode in emacs which has a REPL really nice. Almost impossible to do from within vim. The only plugin I could find actually requires you to have tmux installed and running, idea being that tmux forms some sort of interprocess communication between vim and R so that the repl can be emulated from within vim. Not really a nice, long-term solution. So for R, I still use RStudio with vim-mode enabled, which leaves a lot to be desired.

My vimrc is 420 lines with around 30 plugins. But I do a lot of various languages and file formats with vim: html, css, rst, python, c, cpp, R, tex. And I have customized the **** out of vim.

It's interesting that spacemacs comes with 'mnemonic bindings' coz I have made those myself as well. For instance, I have 'pp' which is Python Python --> opens a REPL pane in tmux, or 'pw' which is Python Watch, which opens a pane in tmux and executes "watch python %' so that script gets executed immediately when I save the source file in vim. Or 'gs' for git status and 'gc' for git commit.

Actually the only reason why I stick to vim is because of the modal editing. That is something I cannot live without.

[iLLucionist]

What drew me to Emacs is REPL integration.  It's true you can make it work in Vim with Tmux and plugins etc, but it fights you every step of the way.

Yeah this is true. Integration with other tools is probably the most significant of vim's weak points.

Evil-mode helps, but it has just enough edge cases to be frustrating.  So I kept coming back to Vim, warts and all, because the modal editing is so good.

...Until I discovered Spacemacs.  Modal editing, plus lots of other goodies (fuzzy finder, shell, git, ...) either built-in, or configured pretty much how I like them by default.

Interesting, I'll have to give spacemacs a try. I've tried a bunch of vi emulation things in various editors (including evil in emacs), and none of them were ever good enough, due to frustrating edge cases as you said.  )

I'm curious.. in what ways is evil-mode (or god-mode) lacking in emacs? I've never tried it and wondering whether it will suffice as a modal alternative to vim..

[hashbaz]

I'm curious.. in what ways is evil-mode (or god-mode) lacking in emacs? I've never tried it and wondering whether it will suffice as a modal alternative to vim..

I don't remember specifically wrt evil-mode, unfortunately. A lot of vim emulations out there neglect things like combining counts with text objects and motion commands, which is really (for me) what makes vim's modal paradigm so efficient and satisfying to use. So for example something like y2w or 3cf_. Some of them are missing the t and f motions entirely, or have those but lack ; and ,

[iLLucionist]

I'm curious.. in what ways is evil-mode (or god-mode) lacking in emacs? I've never tried it and wondering whether it will suffice as a modal alternative to vim..

I don't remember specifically wrt evil-mode, unfortunately. A lot of vim emulations out there neglect things like combining counts with text objects and motion commands, which is really (for me) what makes vim's modal paradigm so efficient and satisfying to use. So for example something like y2w or 3cf_. Some of them are missing the t and f motions entirely, or have those but lack ; and ,

True that. counts combined with motion commands and text objects are extremely powerful, I use them everyday. I should check whether evil-mode has that..

[iLLucionist]

I'm curious.. in what ways is evil-mode (or god-mode) lacking in emacs? I've never tried it and wondering whether it will suffice as a modal alternative to vim..

I don't remember specifically wrt evil-mode, unfortunately. A lot of vim emulations out there neglect things like combining counts with text objects and motion commands, which is really (for me) what makes vim's modal paradigm so efficient and satisfying to use. So for example something like y2w or 3cf_. Some of them are missing the t and f motions entirely, or have those but lack ; and ,

I just fired up spacemacs just to try f, t, ; with counts. They work!

"This is a simple sentence just to try it out."

2fe goes to the first 'e' of the word 'sentence' just like you would expect, for instance.

[CSCoder4ever]

Well this certainly inspired me to try out spacemacs. 

[iLLucionist]

Well this certainly inspired me to try out spacemacs. 

As a hardcore vim user, I am trying it out for a side project and it doesn't disappoint so far. But I've only been playing with it for two days now. Do miss my custom mappings though.. dem muscle memory..

[hoosieree]

You can still do custom mappings, just have to know the magic words.  I have a couple in my config.  If that's not helpful, try the built-in docs (SPC f e h), or its chat room.

I'm curious.. in what ways is evil-mode (or god-mode) lacking in emacs? I've never tried it and wondering whether it will suffice as a modal alternative to vim..

I didn't notice too many issues with plain evil-mode during normal editing, but when I was using it it seemed like Emacs would occasionally interject and require the use of Emacs keybindings, breaking my flow.  Certain odd scenarios seem to disable evil-mode completely and I'd be stuck not knowing how to get it back besides restarting.  Spacemacs feels more cohesive.

Well this certainly inspired me to try out spacemacs. 

Have fun!  Let me know if you write a tutorial about writing a layer or something. 

[rowdy]

https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=38996.0

[CSCoder4ever]

https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=38996.0

There has to be more threads about vim!  )

[rowdy]

https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=38996.0

There has to be more threads about vim!  )

There are, most are just duplicate threads though.

[iLLucionist]

You can still do custom mappings, just have to know the magic words.  I have a couple in my config.  If that's not helpful, try the built-in docs (SPC f e h), or its chat room.

That is genius! Thanks for the config link. Time to try it out. Have you got accustomed to elisp already?

I didn't notice too many issues with plain evil-mode during normal editing, but when I was using it it seemed like Emacs would occasionally interject and require the use of Emacs keybindings, breaking my flow.  Certain odd scenarios seem to disable evil-mode completely and I'd be stuck not knowing how to get it back besides restarting.  Spacemacs feels more cohesive.

Yeah.. the only thing I dislike about it so far is that I have no clue what it is doing and how it is doing. Of course, I should start out with a clean emacs and take it from there as I've done with vim back in the day. But what I oftentimes wonder about a particular feature, is: is this vanilla emacs, a plugin, or the spacemacs glue on top of it?

[iLLucionist]

https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=38996.0

There has to be more threads about vim!  )

SPREAD THE LOVE!

[hoosieree]

That is genius! Thanks for the config link. Time to try it out. Have you got accustomed to elisp already?

I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to any dialect of Lisp, elisp included.  I can read small snippets and mostly comprehend, but I'm not comfortable writing it.

Yeah.. the only thing I dislike about it so far is that I have no clue what it is doing and how it is doing. Of course, I should start out with a clean emacs and take it from there as I've done with vim back in the day. But what I oftentimes wonder about a particular feature, is: is this vanilla emacs, a plugin, or the spacemacs glue on top of it?

If not knowing how Spacemacs works "under the hood" bothers you, you should start from scratch.  That's what I did.  You'll get first-hand knowledge of the raw Emacs interfaces that Spacmacs tries to hide from you.  They're a bit crufty but not outright bad.  If you later switch to Spacemacs, you'll notice that some of these interfaces are completely hidden; others are just wrapped a bit to fit with the Spacemacs way of doing things.

One downside to Spacemacs is that customizing it is harder than customizing either Emacs or Vim, but for me at least this is outweighed by how well it works.

[iLLucionist]

If not knowing how Spacemacs works "under the hood" bothers you, you should start from scratch.  That's what I did.  You'll get first-hand knowledge of the raw Emacs interfaces that Spacmacs tries to hide from you.  They're a bit crufty but not outright bad.  If you later switch to Spacemacs, you'll notice that some of these interfaces are completely hidden; others are just wrapped a bit to fit with the Spacemacs way of doing things.

One downside to Spacemacs is that customizing it is harder than customizing either Emacs or Vim, but for me at least this is outweighed by how well it works.

Thanks, yeah I figured. I should definitely start from scratch to really understand what's going on. Actually, I'm so addicted to vim that I already went looking for vim-plugins that does what spacemacs provides. Only thing that would be handing is this plugin that shows the mappings in a scratch buffer (when you hit space and wait). I've made my own quick and dirty plugin that processes my vimrc and shows all the mappings in a scratch buffer with explanation, but it isn't interactive.

[n__dles]

You'd have to chord, but C-h b for all bindings, C-h m for mode bindings.