11 ms·

Vintageous: Vim emulation for Sublime Text 3

34 points by superchink 13y ago

rzendacott 13y ago
Ah, I love vim mode for Sublime. As the end user, what will be different about this package? Better support for commands? Additionally, is there a page that lists how much progress has been made? Is the support at least at the same level of Vintage's yet?
- avolcano 13y ago
  I'd love to know this too, but the author doesn't seem interested in explaining it: https://github.com/guillermooo/Vintageous/issues/267 https://github.com/guillermooo/Vintageous/issues/267 I installed it, and it works exactly the same, as far as I can tell.
  - rzendacott 13y ago
    Wow, he/she does seem to be quite disinterested. That's disappointing. It would be really useful to know..
    - JonnieCache 13y ago
      > disinterested uninterested. I know we're all supposed to be descriptivists now, but I can't let such a useful distinction fade away.
  - rzendacott 13y ago
    Another contributor commented - it looks like it supports more Vim commands and is being actively maintained, unlike Vintage.
eob 13y ago
For the vim -> Sumblime switchers out there on HN, what caused you to switch? I use vim exclusively but I'm not a religious zealot about technology. I've noticed all my students are using Sublime these days. Is it just the latest TextMate (i.e., the best GUI option if you don't like command-line editors) or are there truly features that will convert command-line folks to the GUI? I'm really hoping for an editor like Brackets (Adobe) to take off, which has really good support for cross editor-browser communication for web development.
- tiziano88 13y ago
  Real command-line folks will not easily move away from command-line apps, since one of their greatest advantages is that they run in a ssh shell from any terminal. For people who often log in remote servers for more than a few minutes a day, this is a dealbreaker :)
- lucisferre 13y ago
  I've tried a few times and just can't do it. The completion isn't actually that great (not that VIm completion plugins are very good either) and Vintage mode is at best a poor-mans VIm emulation. There is no sane way to control splits with the keyboard and block selections just don't work well. Search and replace functionality is also not great compared to my experience with VIm. Too many deal breakers for me.
  - superchink 13y ago
    You likely will still not be convinced, but some of those issues (off the top of my head, at least the splits with keyboard) seem to be addressed by Vintageous (and some [plugins][0] for it). [0]: https://github.com/rodcloutier/Vintageous-Origami https://github.com/rodcloutier/Vintageous-Origami "Vintageous Origami"
    - lucisferre 13y ago
      I've used Origami before, but Sublime's splitting is just fundamentally flawed, simply having some keyboard shortcuts can't fix that.
  - cpeterso 13y ago
    I recently tried switching from Vim to Sublime, but its window splitting just didn't work for me. In Vim, I make :sp and :vsp splits for quick edits all the time. Sublime's splits were cumbersome and didn't have (easy) side-by-side views into the same file.
- madlynormal 13y ago
  The ease of which it is to get started with Sublime Text may be a factor. It's nice not having to worry about managing plugins and custom settings. Though I see no reason to switch if you have taken the time to customize vim to your liking. Once you get a decent package management system for it (Pathongen, Vundle) it's hard to beat.
w-m 13y ago
As someone who just started another attempt at picking up vim (actually vintageous in this case) last week: how do I keep myself from forgetting that I'm in a vim editor? It'll happen every so often that I'm in the middle of something, switch to Sublime and just start typing - as it's second nature. By the time I notice whats going on, I typed half a dozen characters. I'll curse, undo the random commands, get into insert mode and will effectively have lost my train of thought. It may sound ridiculous, but it's actually the biggest hindrance to adopting vim for me. Am I the only one with this problem?
- benjamincburns 13y ago
  > how do I keep myself from forgetting that I'm in a vim editor I think actually using vim would help... Edit: Sorry, that's a bit snarky. All I can say is that vim proficiency comes from muscle memory. Once you adopt vim and feel the "vim flow," it's really quite painful/distracting to use a modeless editor. It's to the point where I was doing a phone interview recently where they had me code in a live editor. Because I'm so used to vim I had a really hard time just writing the code without a bunch of random-looking keystrokes. Fortunately the person on the other end recognized them as vim commands, but it was still distracting.
  - w-m 13y ago
    I have no problem with you being frank. My goal is to become more efficient at editing files, the typing/changing/refactoring part especially. I don't want a new way of opening/saving/handling files, search/replace, version control or debugging - it would just be too much to learn all at once. So I thought Vintageous would be a great opportunity for me to learn the text editing part of vim without burning down my ecosystem. You're right, it's probably part of what leads to my confusion. Still, I thought I'd ask, maybe someone took the same route and managed it somehow.
    - benjamincburns 13y ago
      If you don't mind me being frank, it's really not that much to learn. Opening? :e [filename] Saving? :w [filename] Handling? be more specific? Search? /term<CR> Find next: n Find previous: N Find word under cursor: * Replace all instances? :%s/term to find/new term/g Replace all instances on line: :s/term to find/new term/g Replace first instance on line: :s/term to find/new term Version control? Why do you want version control in your editor? Either way, take a look at fugitive if you must, but using the command line is better... All of that's starting in command mode, of course. Finally, take a look at the vim videos on http://destroyallsoftware.com http://destroyallsoftware.com - they're what got me to say "yeah, I need to spend some time on this..."
larister 13y ago
I'm very much hoping they allow find in Visual mode. I enabled Vintage mode in ST 2 a little while back and love it, but visual find would be very handy. Edit: it does. Awesome.
benjamincburns 13y ago
Am I missing something here? Sublime's an editor last I checked. So's vim. If you want a vim-flavored editor, why not just, I dunno... use vim? Wouldn't this be a bit like building a 'vim mode' for emacs?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- psuter 13y ago
  ...which is something people have done [1]. The goal of these extensions is usually to have the best of both worlds. E.g. block selections in an editor you can script with elisp. [1] http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Evil http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Evil
- hillbillyjack 13y ago
  Vim's modes are quite powerful and easy to get used to. To some extent it is probably people not learning their new editor completely and another part is sometimes the vim-way is just easier/quicker. Being able to escape insert mode and start modifying the text is great to a vim user things like editing inside quotes `ci"` are easy to do without a mouse, as is moving around the file without leaving home row.
- jdc 13y ago
  Some people just aren't down with the "worse is better" design philosophy that Vim and *nix in general share.
- owenjones 13y ago
  I am a dedicated Vim user, but I would assume people looking for an IDE instead of an editor, with tab-complete, file browsing etc but don't want to install and configure the myriad plugins required to get Vim into this state; would prefer Sublime.
- nilkn 13y ago
  Sublime Text has a much better GUI front-end than gvim or MacVim. So for someone who doesn't want to work in a terminal and wants to use a GUI based editor, they may feel that a fully featured vim mode in Sublime Text would offer the best of both worlds: rich keyboard-controlled text editing and a beautiful front-end GUI. I just use vim inside tmux, but that's mostly because I have to write a significant amount of code on a remote machine via ssh. Also, I will say that even as a dedicated vim user I wouldn't be thrilled to use vim without a large number of plugins that more or less just offer features something like Sublime Text can offer natively, like a decent file tree browser. So a vim mode in Sublime Text can make the barrier to entry lower by reducing the need for the modern programmer to load up vim with plugins.
adamors 13y ago
I'm stuck on ST version 2 because a plugin I bought and use daily (Sublime FTP) doesn't work with it yet. What's the point of having a great editor if the ecosystem is this crappy? Guess that concludes my great closed source editor experiment, Vim here I come.
- elithrar 13y ago
  > What's the point of having a great editor if the ecosystem is this crappy? ST3 hasn't even been officially released yet. I think you're getting ahead of yourself: you could also always fork & update the package yourself.
  - superchink 13y ago
    Actually, I don't think you can fork it, since it's a paid plugin and I don't think the source is published.
farslan 13y ago
Anyone out there who still want to use Vim but with Sublime features. I've created back then the project Subvim: https://github.com/fatih/subvim https://github.com/fatih/subvim It's Vim combined with SublimeText features. It has even SublimeText like shortcuts. If you are curious give it a try and see if it fits you :)
iguana 13y ago
This works a lot better than the included "Vintage" mode. I've spent the majority of the past 15 years in vi(m), and have recently switched to Sublime for working on projects with many, many files, plus mouse support.

34 points by superchink 13y ago

Ah, I love vim mode for Sublime. As the end user, what will be different about this package? Better support for commands? Additionally, is there a page that lists how much progress has been made? Is the support at least at the same level of Vintage's yet?

avolcano 13y ago
I'd love to know this too, but the author doesn't seem interested in explaining it: https://github.com/guillermooo/Vintageous/issues/267 https://github.com/guillermooo/Vintageous/issues/267 I installed it, and it works exactly the same, as far as I can tell.
- rzendacott 13y ago
  Wow, he/she does seem to be quite disinterested. That's disappointing. It would be really useful to know..
  - JonnieCache 13y ago
    > disinterested uninterested. I know we're all supposed to be descriptivists now, but I can't let such a useful distinction fade away.
- rzendacott 13y ago
  Another contributor commented - it looks like it supports more Vim commands and is being actively maintained, unlike Vintage.

eob 13y ago

For the vim -> Sumblime switchers out there on HN, what caused you to switch? I use vim exclusively but I'm not a religious zealot about technology. I've noticed all my students are using Sublime these days. Is it just the latest TextMate (i.e., the best GUI option if you don't like command-line editors) or are there truly features that will convert command-line folks to the GUI? I'm really hoping for an editor like Brackets (Adobe) to take off, which has really good support for cross editor-browser communication for web development.

tiziano88 13y ago
Real command-line folks will not easily move away from command-line apps, since one of their greatest advantages is that they run in a ssh shell from any terminal. For people who often log in remote servers for more than a few minutes a day, this is a dealbreaker :)
lucisferre 13y ago
I've tried a few times and just can't do it. The completion isn't actually that great (not that VIm completion plugins are very good either) and Vintage mode is at best a poor-mans VIm emulation. There is no sane way to control splits with the keyboard and block selections just don't work well. Search and replace functionality is also not great compared to my experience with VIm. Too many deal breakers for me.
- superchink 13y ago
  You likely will still not be convinced, but some of those issues (off the top of my head, at least the splits with keyboard) seem to be addressed by Vintageous (and some [plugins][0] for it). [0]: https://github.com/rodcloutier/Vintageous-Origami https://github.com/rodcloutier/Vintageous-Origami "Vintageous Origami"
  - lucisferre 13y ago
    I've used Origami before, but Sublime's splitting is just fundamentally flawed, simply having some keyboard shortcuts can't fix that.
- cpeterso 13y ago
  I recently tried switching from Vim to Sublime, but its window splitting just didn't work for me. In Vim, I make :sp and :vsp splits for quick edits all the time. Sublime's splits were cumbersome and didn't have (easy) side-by-side views into the same file.
madlynormal 13y ago
The ease of which it is to get started with Sublime Text may be a factor. It's nice not having to worry about managing plugins and custom settings. Though I see no reason to switch if you have taken the time to customize vim to your liking. Once you get a decent package management system for it (Pathongen, Vundle) it's hard to beat.

w-m 13y ago

As someone who just started another attempt at picking up vim (actually vintageous in this case) last week: how do I keep myself from forgetting that I'm in a vim editor? It'll happen every so often that I'm in the middle of something, switch to Sublime and just start typing - as it's second nature. By the time I notice whats going on, I typed half a dozen characters. I'll curse, undo the random commands, get into insert mode and will effectively have lost my train of thought. It may sound ridiculous, but it's actually the biggest hindrance to adopting vim for me. Am I the only one with this problem?

benjamincburns 13y ago
> how do I keep myself from forgetting that I'm in a vim editor I think actually using vim would help... Edit: Sorry, that's a bit snarky. All I can say is that vim proficiency comes from muscle memory. Once you adopt vim and feel the "vim flow," it's really quite painful/distracting to use a modeless editor. It's to the point where I was doing a phone interview recently where they had me code in a live editor. Because I'm so used to vim I had a really hard time just writing the code without a bunch of random-looking keystrokes. Fortunately the person on the other end recognized them as vim commands, but it was still distracting.
- w-m 13y ago
  I have no problem with you being frank. My goal is to become more efficient at editing files, the typing/changing/refactoring part especially. I don't want a new way of opening/saving/handling files, search/replace, version control or debugging - it would just be too much to learn all at once. So I thought Vintageous would be a great opportunity for me to learn the text editing part of vim without burning down my ecosystem. You're right, it's probably part of what leads to my confusion. Still, I thought I'd ask, maybe someone took the same route and managed it somehow.
  - benjamincburns 13y ago
    If you don't mind me being frank, it's really not that much to learn. Opening? :e [filename] Saving? :w [filename] Handling? be more specific? Search? /term<CR> Find next: n Find previous: N Find word under cursor: * Replace all instances? :%s/term to find/new term/g Replace all instances on line: :s/term to find/new term/g Replace first instance on line: :s/term to find/new term Version control? Why do you want version control in your editor? Either way, take a look at fugitive if you must, but using the command line is better... All of that's starting in command mode, of course. Finally, take a look at the vim videos on http://destroyallsoftware.com http://destroyallsoftware.com - they're what got me to say "yeah, I need to spend some time on this..."

larister 13y ago

I'm very much hoping they allow find in Visual mode. I enabled Vintage mode in ST 2 a little while back and love it, but visual find would be very handy. Edit: it does. Awesome.

benjamincburns 13y ago

Am I missing something here? Sublime's an editor last I checked. So's vim. If you want a vim-flavored editor, why not just, I dunno... use vim? Wouldn't this be a bit like building a 'vim mode' for emacs?

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
psuter 13y ago
...which is something people have done [1]. The goal of these extensions is usually to have the best of both worlds. E.g. block selections in an editor you can script with elisp. [1] http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Evil http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Evil
hillbillyjack 13y ago
Vim's modes are quite powerful and easy to get used to. To some extent it is probably people not learning their new editor completely and another part is sometimes the vim-way is just easier/quicker. Being able to escape insert mode and start modifying the text is great to a vim user things like editing inside quotes `ci"` are easy to do without a mouse, as is moving around the file without leaving home row.
jdc 13y ago
Some people just aren't down with the "worse is better" design philosophy that Vim and *nix in general share.
owenjones 13y ago
I am a dedicated Vim user, but I would assume people looking for an IDE instead of an editor, with tab-complete, file browsing etc but don't want to install and configure the myriad plugins required to get Vim into this state; would prefer Sublime.
nilkn 13y ago
Sublime Text has a much better GUI front-end than gvim or MacVim. So for someone who doesn't want to work in a terminal and wants to use a GUI based editor, they may feel that a fully featured vim mode in Sublime Text would offer the best of both worlds: rich keyboard-controlled text editing and a beautiful front-end GUI. I just use vim inside tmux, but that's mostly because I have to write a significant amount of code on a remote machine via ssh. Also, I will say that even as a dedicated vim user I wouldn't be thrilled to use vim without a large number of plugins that more or less just offer features something like Sublime Text can offer natively, like a decent file tree browser. So a vim mode in Sublime Text can make the barrier to entry lower by reducing the need for the modern programmer to load up vim with plugins.

adamors 13y ago

I'm stuck on ST version 2 because a plugin I bought and use daily (Sublime FTP) doesn't work with it yet. What's the point of having a great editor if the ecosystem is this crappy? Guess that concludes my great closed source editor experiment, Vim here I come.

elithrar 13y ago
> What's the point of having a great editor if the ecosystem is this crappy? ST3 hasn't even been officially released yet. I think you're getting ahead of yourself: you could also always fork & update the package yourself.
- superchink 13y ago
  Actually, I don't think you can fork it, since it's a paid plugin and I don't think the source is published.

farslan 13y ago

Anyone out there who still want to use Vim but with Sublime features. I've created back then the project Subvim: https://github.com/fatih/subvim https://github.com/fatih/subvim It's Vim combined with SublimeText features. It has even SublimeText like shortcuts. If you are curious give it a try and see if it fits you :)

iguana 13y ago

This works a lot better than the included "Vintage" mode. I've spent the majority of the past 15 years in vi(m), and have recently switched to Sublime for working on projects with many, many files, plus mouse support.