8 ms·

I'm not very familiar with VIM - could someone explain what this is? Seems like some settings to make NeoVIM into a note-taking app?

by CA0DA 5y ago

cercatrova 5y ago
org mode in emacs is a very popular note-taking tool. This seeks to emulate and refine it for (neo)vim.
- CA0DA 5y ago
  Thanks!
bloopernova 5y ago
vim is the "VIsual editor iMproved", which is an upgrade to the "VIsual editor". It works by having a text entry "mode" and a separate text manipulation mode. This is very powerful, but does take some getting used to. For example, let's say you want to delete 5 lines: In visual studio code, you'd either select all the text and hit backspace, or maybe hold ctrl+backspace to delete whole words at a time. In vim, you'd hit escape to exit "insert" mode, then position your cursor at the beginning of the 5 lines to be deleted, and type "5dd" which means "delete a whole line, 5 times". In the hands of an experienced vim user, it can make amazing edits to text in fractions of a second. It's really cool! It also works in a terminal, so it's available to you when you SSH to a remote server, for instance. Org-mode is kind of like Markdown, in that it's a way for plain text to have structure. Something like this: * Birthday Party Plan ** INPROGRESS [#A] Buy cake Ask Jen about her baker friend's availability ** TODO [#B] Buy beverages Talk to Mike about his party and what people drank ** INPROGRESS [#A] Send invitations <DEADLINE 2021-08-10> *** DONE Design invites *** TODO Get Addresses *** TODO Mail merge *** TODO Print invites Lots of stuff going on there! I'm tracking the state of each made up todo item. I've got a priority on the main todo items, and a deadline for one of them. Org is note taking, scheduling, structured text, even running programs and scripts inside your notes and saving the results in the note itself. From orgmode.org: "Org mode is for keeping notes, maintaining to-do lists, planning projects, authoring documents, computational notebooks, literate programming and more — in a fast and effective plain text system." So, all of that is being supported by NeoVIM now :) I hope that helped, let me know if there's anything you want clarified or expanded.
- crubier 5y ago
  To remove 5 lines in VSCode I would just type cmd-backspace 5 times. Don’t even have to count the number of lines beforehand. Just delete lines until it looks as you wanted. Much simpler than the complex process you describe, that involves counting lines and moving the cursor to the exact correct position. As always, I am unimpressed by “vim tricks” that vim people always boast about. And I am yet to see a single real use case where vim is faster than good old basic keyboard shortcuts (that includes cmd-d)
  - Ancapistani 5y ago
    > And I am yet to see a single real use case where vim is faster than good old basic keyboard shortcuts (that includes cmd-d) I feel like I’m far from a vim “power user”, but people regularly comment on how quickly I edit text and code when I’m doing a screenshare. It becomes second nature in short order, so I’m never thinking about some multi-step process to before an edit; I just “do it”. As for the “5dd” example… there are multiple ways to do things. For me, that would likely be: * navigate to the first or last line of the block * <shift+V> to start a selection of whole lines. * navigate to the other extreme * <D>
  - paraknight 5y ago
    There are many ways to skin a cat. Personally, in vim, I would do "dj" or "dk" twice, (deletes two lines up or down respectively) and then dd for the 5th one. Where vim shines is where you can just naturally start stringing together "sentences" of vim vocabulary and you can do what you mean. The macro system allows you to store these commands on the fly and replay them too.
  - iimblack 5y ago
    In vim you would actually just do 5dk to delete 5 previous lines. Or just do dk to delete one line, then . to repeat until satisfied. So you get an easy way to repeat actions. You can make this into a macro easily if needed. Then, most importantly in my opinion, you keep your hands in the normal typing position. The command key is awkward for me to reach and hurts my hands.
  - 5y ago
slightwinder 5y ago
Looks like another iteration of someones personal markup-flavor, aimed at task-managment for self-organization. Basically, a todo-list in text-form. But I don't see anything worthful yet which makes this flavor preferable over org-mode or markdown. Seems to be also still very in progress. So give it some more years to grow I would say.
- zelphirkalt 5y ago
  Markdown and Org are not in the same league. However, the goal is to have something like Org in (Neo)Vim. It will take a while, if it ever happens to get to feature parity with Org though. Edit: I would welcome though, if Org was supported well in (Neo)Vim. Then there would be one less excuse not to use it.
  - slightwinder 5y ago
    > Markdown and Org are not in the same league. I don't think so. Their focus and culture is different and so each has different tools available, but syntax-wise they are pretty much the same and you can overall build the same tools for both.
    - zelphirkalt 5y ago
      Org comes more like an interconnected ecosystem, while in Markdown, you will have to choose your tooling wisely and will still not be able to do all the things you can do in Org. A few examples: Export to many formats. Emacs ox-... packages. Hit C-c C-e there you go. In Markdown there is no integrated tool for that, there is only the rather excellent Pandoc, but Pandoc itself suggests its own Markdown dialect (! not what we are talking about here) for things like footnotes and quotes and such things, which are required for technical writing. Running code from Org files in Emacs is, thanks to the Emacs integration of Org, a simple thing to do, once you got an interpreter / compiler installed and configured appropriately. This in conjunction with noweb (oh, did I mention that one?) enables literate programming. Yet another case of needing a specialized markdown dialect. LaTeX in Org mode documents is possible and the format takes precautions to enable you to do anything you want using LaTeX in an Org file. In Markdown it depends again on your Markdown processing tool. Again Pandoc to the rescue, mostly. Things like the already mentioned footnotes and citations and quotes. Some of that stuff is not available in Markdown. You can merely patch something up using HTML or, if you use Pandoc, perhaps you can add LaTeX to your document. This becomes a necessity, rather than a choice like in Org, because Org supports these things. Document internal linking. In Markdown you can again only patch it to full capability by using HTML. In Org it is included in the format. Tables and spreadsheets. You need special markdown dialects for that, which have special processing tools, which can then do half the things you can do in Org using spreadsheets. You can probably somehow shoehorn all of that into some kind of markdown dialect or multiple ones and process it using multiple external tools. It is just not there in normal Markdown and you will have to build the whole chain yourself or use some obscure tool, that has already showhorned it all. So Org and Markdown are really 2 different kinds of beasts. For more details you could join the Emacs-org-mode mailing list, where people all the time come with tricky questions and use-cases they are using Org for. Quite an active mailing list.
_benj 5y ago
In my opinion is the creation of an actual alternative to emacs, but more modern and simpler using lua instead of (e)lisp. I have nothing against emacs but being a fan of vim and of simpler systems I'm a fan of what I'm seeing being done with NeoVIM!

I'm not very familiar with VIM - could someone explain what this is? Seems like some settings to make NeoVIM into a note-taking app?

by CA0DA 5y ago

I'm not very familiar with VIM - could someone explain what this is? Seems like some settings to make NeoVIM into a note-taking app?

cercatrova 5y ago

org mode in emacs is a very popular note-taking tool. This seeks to emulate and refine it for (neo)vim.

CA0DA 5y ago
Thanks!

bloopernova 5y ago

vim is the "VIsual editor iMproved", which is an upgrade to the "VIsual editor". It works by having a text entry "mode" and a separate text manipulation mode. This is very powerful, but does take some getting used to. For example, let's say you want to delete 5 lines: In visual studio code, you'd either select all the text and hit backspace, or maybe hold ctrl+backspace to delete whole words at a time. In vim, you'd hit escape to exit "insert" mode, then position your cursor at the beginning of the 5 lines to be deleted, and type "5dd" which means "delete a whole line, 5 times". In the hands of an experienced vim user, it can make amazing edits to text in fractions of a second. It's really cool! It also works in a terminal, so it's available to you when you SSH to a remote server, for instance. Org-mode is kind of like Markdown, in that it's a way for plain text to have structure. Something like this: * Birthday Party Plan ** INPROGRESS [#A] Buy cake Ask Jen about her baker friend's availability ** TODO [#B] Buy beverages Talk to Mike about his party and what people drank ** INPROGRESS [#A] Send invitations <DEADLINE 2021-08-10> *** DONE Design invites *** TODO Get Addresses *** TODO Mail merge *** TODO Print invites Lots of stuff going on there! I'm tracking the state of each made up todo item. I've got a priority on the main todo items, and a deadline for one of them. Org is note taking, scheduling, structured text, even running programs and scripts inside your notes and saving the results in the note itself. From orgmode.org: "Org mode is for keeping notes, maintaining to-do lists, planning projects, authoring documents, computational notebooks, literate programming and more — in a fast and effective plain text system." So, all of that is being supported by NeoVIM now :) I hope that helped, let me know if there's anything you want clarified or expanded.

crubier 5y ago
To remove 5 lines in VSCode I would just type cmd-backspace 5 times. Don’t even have to count the number of lines beforehand. Just delete lines until it looks as you wanted. Much simpler than the complex process you describe, that involves counting lines and moving the cursor to the exact correct position. As always, I am unimpressed by “vim tricks” that vim people always boast about. And I am yet to see a single real use case where vim is faster than good old basic keyboard shortcuts (that includes cmd-d)
- Ancapistani 5y ago
  > And I am yet to see a single real use case where vim is faster than good old basic keyboard shortcuts (that includes cmd-d) I feel like I’m far from a vim “power user”, but people regularly comment on how quickly I edit text and code when I’m doing a screenshare. It becomes second nature in short order, so I’m never thinking about some multi-step process to before an edit; I just “do it”. As for the “5dd” example… there are multiple ways to do things. For me, that would likely be: * navigate to the first or last line of the block * <shift+V> to start a selection of whole lines. * navigate to the other extreme * <D>
- paraknight 5y ago
  There are many ways to skin a cat. Personally, in vim, I would do "dj" or "dk" twice, (deletes two lines up or down respectively) and then dd for the 5th one. Where vim shines is where you can just naturally start stringing together "sentences" of vim vocabulary and you can do what you mean. The macro system allows you to store these commands on the fly and replay them too.
- iimblack 5y ago
  In vim you would actually just do 5dk to delete 5 previous lines. Or just do dk to delete one line, then . to repeat until satisfied. So you get an easy way to repeat actions. You can make this into a macro easily if needed. Then, most importantly in my opinion, you keep your hands in the normal typing position. The command key is awkward for me to reach and hurts my hands.
- 5y ago

slightwinder 5y ago

Looks like another iteration of someones personal markup-flavor, aimed at task-managment for self-organization. Basically, a todo-list in text-form. But I don't see anything worthful yet which makes this flavor preferable over org-mode or markdown. Seems to be also still very in progress. So give it some more years to grow I would say.

zelphirkalt 5y ago
Markdown and Org are not in the same league. However, the goal is to have something like Org in (Neo)Vim. It will take a while, if it ever happens to get to feature parity with Org though. Edit: I would welcome though, if Org was supported well in (Neo)Vim. Then there would be one less excuse not to use it.
- slightwinder 5y ago
  > Markdown and Org are not in the same league. I don't think so. Their focus and culture is different and so each has different tools available, but syntax-wise they are pretty much the same and you can overall build the same tools for both.
  - zelphirkalt 5y ago
    Org comes more like an interconnected ecosystem, while in Markdown, you will have to choose your tooling wisely and will still not be able to do all the things you can do in Org. A few examples: Export to many formats. Emacs ox-... packages. Hit C-c C-e there you go. In Markdown there is no integrated tool for that, there is only the rather excellent Pandoc, but Pandoc itself suggests its own Markdown dialect (! not what we are talking about here) for things like footnotes and quotes and such things, which are required for technical writing. Running code from Org files in Emacs is, thanks to the Emacs integration of Org, a simple thing to do, once you got an interpreter / compiler installed and configured appropriately. This in conjunction with noweb (oh, did I mention that one?) enables literate programming. Yet another case of needing a specialized markdown dialect. LaTeX in Org mode documents is possible and the format takes precautions to enable you to do anything you want using LaTeX in an Org file. In Markdown it depends again on your Markdown processing tool. Again Pandoc to the rescue, mostly. Things like the already mentioned footnotes and citations and quotes. Some of that stuff is not available in Markdown. You can merely patch something up using HTML or, if you use Pandoc, perhaps you can add LaTeX to your document. This becomes a necessity, rather than a choice like in Org, because Org supports these things. Document internal linking. In Markdown you can again only patch it to full capability by using HTML. In Org it is included in the format. Tables and spreadsheets. You need special markdown dialects for that, which have special processing tools, which can then do half the things you can do in Org using spreadsheets. You can probably somehow shoehorn all of that into some kind of markdown dialect or multiple ones and process it using multiple external tools. It is just not there in normal Markdown and you will have to build the whole chain yourself or use some obscure tool, that has already showhorned it all. So Org and Markdown are really 2 different kinds of beasts. For more details you could join the Emacs-org-mode mailing list, where people all the time come with tricky questions and use-cases they are using Org for. Quite an active mailing list.

_benj 5y ago

In my opinion is the creation of an actual alternative to emacs, but more modern and simpler using lua instead of (e)lisp. I have nothing against emacs but being a fan of vim and of simpler systems I'm a fan of what I'm seeing being done with NeoVIM!