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Vim has the kind of user lock-in mechanism that big corporations can only dream of: modal editing. Once you get sold on modal text editing it becomes very dif

Vim has the kind of user lock-in mechanism that big corporations can only dream of: modal editing. Once you get sold on modal text editing it becomes very difficult to accept or use any other editor that doesn't do it (which is pretty much every other text editor out there). Sublime, Textmate, e - all great editors. Don't feel like using any of them after 10 years of Vim.

m0shen 15y ago
You can have Vi keybindings in many popular editors / IDEs. There are plugins/settings for: * Eclipse * IntelliJ * NetBeans * Komodo Edit / IDE * Visual Studio Just FYI. Your plugins, macros and settings though... it's tough to have those follow you around.
- JoshTriplett 15y ago
  vi keybindings don't really suffice, though, even when fully implemented (which many tools don't). I don't just want basic text editing functionality, though vim does that extraordinarily well. I want substitution, compilation/quickfix mode, grep, indentation, abbreviations, file modes, highlighting, and a dozen other things that prove hard to enumerate until my fingers automatically use them and they don't work.
  - LarrySDonald 15y ago
    It's a good step forward though. For years, I was always torn about IDEs, it's very handy to be able to do so much automatically rather than having to do everything yourself. So much so that the productivity boost is near-required in a modern environment. But.. you don't get to edit in vi. For no particular reason as such, the editing scheme in the IDE is no less arbitrary. The whole kit would be nice, but hey, if it's at least modal and support the normal keyboard functions (around what you'd get if you just ssh:ed into your buddies box to help him with something and ended up editing things with vi, the local version, nothing customized) that's a lot.
tricolon 15y ago
I'm still not sold on modal editing. Please sell it to me.
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  You don't get sold on knowing on an intellectual level what it is. You get sold on it by using it.
  - tricolon 15y ago
    I'm just in the middle of the learning curve and was wondering if I was missing something.
- statictype 15y ago
  Stuff I can think of off the top of my head: It's easier on the fingers. You can move around using jkl, perform clipboard operations,deletions and other text operations generally without having your fingers leave the main keyboard area to reach for the modifier keys or arrows. It works especially well if you remap Caps to Escape. It's logical: dd deletes a line. 10dd deletes 10 lines. f+ moves the cursor to forward to the next '+' character on the line. 2f+ does it twice - moves the cursor to the second '+' on the line. df+ delete from the current position to the first + character. Commands are chainable: d2f+ deletes from the current position to the second '+' on the line. In general when you have modal UIs (not specific to text editing) it makes it easier to accomplish work as you're working in a 'mode' that is specific to your task. When in insert-mode, your keyboard is used to insert text. In editing-mode[1] your keyboard's functionality is now used for the sole purpose of making edits and manipulating existing text. In visual-mode, the keys provide functionality to easily highlight and manipulate highlighted text. That said - modal editing does have its drawbacks. There's a higher learning curve. And the lock-in thing I mentioned isn't necessarily a good thing. Non-modal editors can reasonably emulate each other's keybindings allowing you to easily shift between, say, Sublime and Textmate and Visual Studio. But good luck doing any of that with Vim thrown in. Also, Vim users have to still learn a reasonable amount of emacs keybindings in order to efficiently use the command line and native text fields on Linux/MacOSX. Also as someone joked recently - Vim has 2 modes: 1) Beep at me 2) Destroy all my text [1] not actually called that but that's how I like to think of it
michaelty 15y ago
Emacs has evil-mode: https://gitorious.org/evil/pages/Home https://gitorious.org/evil/pages/Home I find it great for focusing on the power that M-X brings.
alinajaf 15y ago
Another vim user and I were discussing this and I came up with the nutty idea of creating a 'vimspec' that detailed the basic features and extensibility a 'vim-mode' plugin in another environment would need to have to be useful to regular vim users. I think most people developing 'vim-mode' plugins for other environments aren't necessarily vim power users so won't be aware of how natural normal mode is to regular vimmers (and importantly, what features you will miss). Some sort of vim standard for normal mode might go a way towards making normal mode with its commands a more ubiquitous interface for editing text.
- eggoa 15y ago
  This would be great. I have to use Excel every day at work and it's pretty annoying that 36+ keys of the keyboard basically just enter insert mode. A solid, trustworthy vimperator-style plugin for Excel would be amazing.

m0shen 15y ago

You can have Vi keybindings in many popular editors / IDEs. There are plugins/settings for: * Eclipse * IntelliJ * NetBeans * Komodo Edit / IDE * Visual Studio Just FYI. Your plugins, macros and settings though... it's tough to have those follow you around.

JoshTriplett 15y ago
vi keybindings don't really suffice, though, even when fully implemented (which many tools don't). I don't just want basic text editing functionality, though vim does that extraordinarily well. I want substitution, compilation/quickfix mode, grep, indentation, abbreviations, file modes, highlighting, and a dozen other things that prove hard to enumerate until my fingers automatically use them and they don't work.
- LarrySDonald 15y ago
  It's a good step forward though. For years, I was always torn about IDEs, it's very handy to be able to do so much automatically rather than having to do everything yourself. So much so that the productivity boost is near-required in a modern environment. But.. you don't get to edit in vi. For no particular reason as such, the editing scheme in the IDE is no less arbitrary. The whole kit would be nice, but hey, if it's at least modal and support the normal keyboard functions (around what you'd get if you just ssh:ed into your buddies box to help him with something and ended up editing things with vi, the local version, nothing customized) that's a lot.

tricolon 15y ago

I'm still not sold on modal editing. Please sell it to me.

burgerbrain 15y ago
You don't get sold on knowing on an intellectual level what it is. You get sold on it by using it.
- tricolon 15y ago
  I'm just in the middle of the learning curve and was wondering if I was missing something.
statictype 15y ago
Stuff I can think of off the top of my head: It's easier on the fingers. You can move around using jkl, perform clipboard operations,deletions and other text operations generally without having your fingers leave the main keyboard area to reach for the modifier keys or arrows. It works especially well if you remap Caps to Escape. It's logical: dd deletes a line. 10dd deletes 10 lines. f+ moves the cursor to forward to the next '+' character on the line. 2f+ does it twice - moves the cursor to the second '+' on the line. df+ delete from the current position to the first + character. Commands are chainable: d2f+ deletes from the current position to the second '+' on the line. In general when you have modal UIs (not specific to text editing) it makes it easier to accomplish work as you're working in a 'mode' that is specific to your task. When in insert-mode, your keyboard is used to insert text. In editing-mode[1] your keyboard's functionality is now used for the sole purpose of making edits and manipulating existing text. In visual-mode, the keys provide functionality to easily highlight and manipulate highlighted text. That said - modal editing does have its drawbacks. There's a higher learning curve. And the lock-in thing I mentioned isn't necessarily a good thing. Non-modal editors can reasonably emulate each other's keybindings allowing you to easily shift between, say, Sublime and Textmate and Visual Studio. But good luck doing any of that with Vim thrown in. Also, Vim users have to still learn a reasonable amount of emacs keybindings in order to efficiently use the command line and native text fields on Linux/MacOSX. Also as someone joked recently - Vim has 2 modes: 1) Beep at me 2) Destroy all my text [1] not actually called that but that's how I like to think of it

michaelty 15y ago

Emacs has evil-mode: https://gitorious.org/evil/pages/Home https://gitorious.org/evil/pages/Home I find it great for focusing on the power that M-X brings.

alinajaf 15y ago

Another vim user and I were discussing this and I came up with the nutty idea of creating a 'vimspec' that detailed the basic features and extensibility a 'vim-mode' plugin in another environment would need to have to be useful to regular vim users. I think most people developing 'vim-mode' plugins for other environments aren't necessarily vim power users so won't be aware of how natural normal mode is to regular vimmers (and importantly, what features you will miss). Some sort of vim standard for normal mode might go a way towards making normal mode with its commands a more ubiquitous interface for editing text.

eggoa 15y ago
This would be great. I have to use Excel every day at work and it's pretty annoying that 36+ keys of the keyboard basically just enter insert mode. A solid, trustworthy vimperator-style plugin for Excel would be amazing.