Vim

Presentations

I've done this presentation three times, each a different length and the content has varied considerably. If you didn't attend one, the most recent (LinuxCon) is probably the best.

The editor vi was created in 1976 by Bill Joy (wikipedia). It's both incredibly powerful and agonizingly counter-intuitive. It remains in widespread use and still under development today, primarily in the form of Bram Moolenaar's vim. It's painful to learn, but once you have it's an utterly fantastic editor.

An essential learning resource about VimScript, the language you can reprogram the editor in: Learn Vimscript the Hard Way - I encourage you to buy a book copy, but you can read it all online too.

Colour Schemes

To change colour schemes, type :colo <name> where you should replace "<name>" with "torte" or some other colour scheme that's on your system.

Best way to compare and choose colour schemes: code.google.com/p/vimcolorschemetest/ (click on one of the "Browse By File Types" at the bottom of the page). Be warned: this will put a massive load on your JavaScript engine. I'm a Firefox fan, but Chrome is recommended here: it doesn't choke as badly.

See my blog entry on the subject.

Plugins

Functions

I have date formats I use a lot, the commonest being:

     3 December 2014
     ---------------

I created an insert mode abbreviation for that, ,d. Here's the function. Copy it into your vimrc if it's useful to you.


https://www.gilesorr.com/vim/ 
by giles