make-believe.org

Vim is forever

In case you were curious, this is where I spend my days. It's vim, the famous modal text editor.

Vim users have an unfair reputation for cultism, largely because newcomers find it shockingly different to anything they've coded with before. Not everyone overcomes this, which is cool. Some people just like mousing around. I am not one of these people.

A few different things are going on in this picture:

• rails.vim, which I mostly use passively for the contextual syntax highlighting.
• WinManager, which sets up those side panes how I like them. It's been retooled a bit under the hood to circumvent some minor annoyances.
• FileTree, which has been significantly modified to a) replace the File Explorer in WinManager, and b) to do things like easier directory unfolding, create and rename files, and many other tasks. Took some work to get it just so, but ah, it's quite something to fly around filesystems with your fingers.
• BufExplorer, standard vim issue, listing all my open files in the bottom left box. I've made a few presentational tweaks to maximise information-per-pixel.

My console (non-gui) setup of vim is basically the same, with line numbers and WinManager off by default so I've got the full 80 characters to play with.

All those hacks on WinManager, FileTree and BufExplorer are just that, so I'm not putting them up here or elsewhere. But if you're really, unbearably in need of them, get in touch.

Joseph | 17 Jul 2007 | 5 comments