

A Starting Guide to VIM from Textmate - dfischer
http://blog.danielfischer.com/2010/11/19/a-starting-guide-to-vim-from-textmate/

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zkirill
My favorite VIM color scheme. [http://dengmao.wordpress.com/2007/01/22/vim-
color-scheme-wom...](http://dengmao.wordpress.com/2007/01/22/vim-color-scheme-
wombat/)

With Monaco 13 typeface it's bliss.

~~~
pyre
Colorschemes that use italics are hit-or-miss for me. Sometimes I prefer to
use Terminus which doesn't have an italic typeface, but vim will try and
emulate one horribly. (Or when using DejaVu Sans Mono at 9pt (?) because the
lowercase 'd' has it's tall part cut off when in italics causing it to look
like an 'a')

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devdas
The snipmate plugin at <http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2540>
may be useful for other textmate users. As a non Textmate user (I use vim), I
have no idea of how well it would map to their Textmate experience.

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bphogan
I used to use VIm for years before I got my mac, and I've been moving back to
it recently.

One thing I'm surprised nobody ever mentions is the ! command.

If I'm working on a file and I want to, say, commit my work, I can do

    
    
        :!git commit -a -m "committing my changes"
    

I used to do this a lot when working with Oracle and Bash. It's much quicker
than opening another terminal for one-off commands.

~~~
matwood
You can always use fugitive which wraps many git commands into vim plugin:

<http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2975>

~~~
bphogan
Yes, that's really great too... I was just looking for an example that many
people could relate to. :)

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powdahound
I think the the Command-T plugin for vim is one of the most helpful things
when switching from TextMate: <https://wincent.com/products/command-t>

~~~
dfischer
Yes, I think I use this more than anything in my workflow.

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sudonim
I used to get stuck in vim when logging in to linux servers. The key things to
know for any newbie...

:q

i

ESC

:w

After I learned those, I've really come to love Vim. I imagine I'd need to
learn about 50 more commands before I could be really well versed. What are
some other important things to know?

~~~
gurraman
I started writing the basic commands in a comment, but it got kind of long.
You'd best look at a reference.

<http://tnerual.eriogerg.free.fr/vimqrc.html>
<http://www.pixelbeat.org/vim.tips.html>
<http://www.rayninfo.co.uk/vimtips.html>

I'd start with looking at commands that allow you to quickly move around in
buffers first (/, f, t, w, e, b etc). Then start combining those with actions
(ct", dw etc). Then "timesavers" such as macros and built-in conveniences (q,
gqq, marks etc). The rest will come to you.

~~~
wyclif
Python and vim: Two great tastes that go together (slides):
[http://www.tummy.com/Community/Presentations/vimpython-20070...](http://www.tummy.com/Community/Presentations/vimpython-20070225/vim.html)

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frb
Lately I've noticed that more and more TextMate users are switching (back) to
VIM. For years TextMate has been really popular, but now it looks as it's
losing more and more users.

Would be interesting to know why. What made you switch from TextMate to VIM?

~~~
lenni
I switched to Vim because to me it seems that TM2 is vapourware. I know Allan
is trying to get it right with his second go but he is _so_ coy about any sort
of details that I lost interest in it.

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zenshade
One thing that can be a negative irritant for new users is how far the esc key
is and how often they have to reach for it. Vi wasn't designed that way. It
was designed for keyboards that had esc where the caps lock key is on modern
keyboards. One solution is to map caps lock to the esc key. Another solution,
the one I prefer, is to map ii instead. This can be done with the following in
the .vimrc file:

imap <silent> ii <Esc>:let &insermode=0<CR>

This doesn't work so well if you are frequently editing files on multiple
servers you can't edit the .vimrc file on. But for your local environment
it'll make going in and out of insert mode a lot more efficient.

I'm dead used to using ii now so I'm probably not going to switch, but others
have pointed out kk may be a better choice, due to greater distance between
keystrokes/mode. Indeed, about one in ten times I hit ii when I don't need to.

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trafficlight
<http://vimcasts.org/> has some excellent howto videos on Vim.

~~~
spacemanaki
And he's writing a book on mastering Vim. "Vim’s documentation reads like a
dictionary; I propose to write a phrasebook."

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spacemanaki
I'm being pedantic but, isn't it "Vim" not "VIM"? I seem to remember seeing
something like a usage suggestion on the site but can't find it. It just looks
silly to me, like when people write "LISP."

~~~
frb
Although I've seen people "Vim", "VIM" and "vim" I never really thought about
what the correct spelling is. Most times I went with "VIM" since I always
thought of it as acronym for "Vi IMproved".

But I think you're right with "Vim", since even on vim.org it's spelled like
that.

