
My biggest problem with Vim - haldean
http://haldean.org/docstore/?vim-problems
======
bcrescimanno
It's definitely a problem All Vi/Vim users know well; and, it's precisely why
I don't install these "vim mode" plugins / extensions / whatever for other
software. Simply put: no matter what they do, it's still not actually Vim. And
honestly, I'd rather be forced to do a complete mental shift into a "plain
editor" mode rather than have to wrestle with "will this particular
combination of Vim commands work in this pseudo-Vim world?"

I've found that if I completely break the expectation that I'll get anything
even remotely "Vim-like" outside of Vim, I'm better able to deal.

...though I still wish I could make every editor I have to interact with a Vim
window. :)

~~~
dlikhten
I started using VIM 3 months ago. And now I can't fucking use anything else.
The ergo gains of vim are so rediculously awesome, and NOBODY else does VI
right, other than VI. Even Sublime 2, it has vintage mode but its not VI, it's
missing most of the magic. This is why we need a new VI. One that has better
syntax highlighting, one that can use something other than VIMScript AND STILL
support all of vimscript. Something with better graphics like what Sublime 2
has, but still lose nothing of VIM's power.

Tough project, but needs to be done.

~~~
bcrescimanno
Better syntax highlighting? For what language? In all honesty, it's not super-
tough to write your own syntax for any language. If you do it, release it on
github and others will probably be willing to contribute.

Vim has support for scripting against Python and Ruby in addition to
VimScript.

Better graphics? For what purpose? For displaying text?

~~~
Ralith
> it's not super-tough to write your own syntax for any language

Spoken like somebody who's never tried to parse C++.

~~~
slurgfest
Parsing C++ isn't required if all you are doing is syntax coloring.

vim has a fully configurable syntax highlighting system; its behavior is not
hard-coded. So if you have a problem with how C++ is highlighted then you
don't need to petition for the developers to patch or rewrite vim for you.

You can tweak the related configuration. And it's true that it's really not
that hard to make your own new configuration to do this. Because you aren't
compiling the code, you are only highlighting it according to your own tastes.

~~~
Ralith
Any syntax highlighting scheme which does not leverage a language parser is
woefully limited. If you're satisfied with a scattering of heuristics, great;
you'll find satisfaction in a much wider set of tools. Myself, I want syntax
highlighting that doesn't break as soon as I do something unusual, and which
is capable of more than identifying keywords.

Given that vim is open source, I'm not sure why you think hard-coded syntax
highlighting would be impossible for me to modify.

~~~
slurgfest
Mind the context: the guy said there needed to be a "new VI" to have "better"
syntax highlighting (whatever specifically he meant by that). You broke in to
emphasize how tough it is to parse C++, which is true, but not entirely
relevant; the person you replied to was simply pointing out that it's easy to
reconfigure vim's syntax highlighting to almost any requirement. Which is
true, by the way.

It appears that you are preoccupied with hard-coded construction of ASTs for
some dialect of C++ inside your editor. I never suggested it could not be
done. But, this is a different issue.

However, I really don't think many people need that when the facilities for
configuring syntax highlighting are so good. The existing system has allowed
vim to support a crazy number of languages and have fresh support for
languages quite quickly after they start to be used.

If you like vim, and you want something SPECIFIC to be fixed about its C++
highlighting (not just a general complaint that you feel it is 'woefully
limited' because it isn't based on hardcoded static analysis for C++) ... then
don't waste time on doubt. Just try it. Make your own highlighting script and
see if it works to a usable level. If it does not, then you know, and not just
because of some a priori principle that syntax highlighting is useless unless
it is based on an AST generated by your compiler toolchain or something.

If you really did have any practical reason to believe that the existing
syntax highlighting facility was totally unsuitable for more than a handful of
people... maybe it would be interesting to have some way of plugging in
external modules of some kind to provide ASTs for specific languages. (Because
I think the idea of making my text editor totally coupled to a specific hard-
coded implementation of a parser for a particular language sucks really bad;
but if you don't think that, then maybe you just want to buy a C++ IDE and be
done with it)

~~~
Ralith
What makes you think I want anything hard-coded?

------
AYBABTME
I've been trying to switch my programming to vim, I don't know why (in fact I
know, because everybody everywhere promises it's the single greatest thing
ever made). I got to learn a couple of commands, enough to feel quite
comfortable with it. But my major problem, what refrains me from using it for
everything, is its lack of support for refactoring. In fact, if I could find a
plugin that can properly handle 'renaming' in a couple of common languages,
I'd be sold. But I searched, many times, and didn't find. Same for
'intellisense', which is somewhat emulated with 'omnicompletion' that I have
all set up, but it's not context-sensitive...

I'm honestly wondering how people do to use vim for their projects. Are they
giving up on refactoring althogether, or they are doing them the slow-way,
step by step. Same for intellisense, I find it's so convenient to have
documentation and in-context pop-up right in the middle of my thoughts; it
makes me doubt of the productivity advantages that vim-evangelist claims.

I really try hard to learn more, to tweak vim more, to tame it more, hoping to
reach the top of that learning-curve and to see just how ignorant I was
before. But I'm in doubt. Is it real, or is it just some cultural dogma that
vim is the ultimate tool?

~~~
bcrescimanno
These are honestly the two biggest criticisms I hear about Vim; and, if
they're features you really do use often, I don't really have any good
response in store.

Regarding refactoring; I don't really miss it at all. For renaming, I simply
use vim-ack and find where a rename would need to take place. In most cases
(for the projects I work on) we're talking about the difference of maybe 30-45
seconds.

Intellisense is cool; there's no doubt about it and there's not really
anything that comes close in Vim (omnicompletion really does pale in
comparison). That said, the only type of projects that I've ever felt I really
used Intellisense were sprawling Java applications. I've never missed it while
working on JavaScript or Ruby projects (and, anecdotally, I've heard many C
and Python developers also talk about not needing this feature).

Ultimately, Vim benefits me with overall productivity (for example, it takes
Vim an order of magnitude less time to start up than Eclipse on my Macbook Pro
--and then proceeds to lock up every few minutes while it does GC or whatever
the hell else it does to just randomly stop from time-to-time). While I'm in
the mode of writing and editing code, it's also significantly faster and
easier on my hands and arms to be totally keyboard focused.

All that said, it's a really text-centric form of programming that is somewhat
different from the hand-holding (not meant as derogatory; just a statement of
fact) and all-in-one approach that an IDE can give you. There are some
contexts (Java) that just aren't well suited to editing in Vim (but they're
probably not suited for Sublime or TextMate either, honestly).

~~~
kingmanaz
>That said, the only type of projects that I've ever felt I really used
Intellisense were sprawling Java applications.

Exactly. I've recently been using omnicompletion with Go (gocode) and while
it's neat, it is not essential as completion is when writing
Java/C#/ActionScript. I believe it has to do with the former language's
reliance on multiple-inheritance as opposed to Go's duck typing. With
multiple-inheritance one seems "farther" away from atomic data structures; to
understand the objects one must learn an entire tree of taxonomy.

Personally I find Go's approach refreshing; with one page of documentation one
can "see" how an entire collection of types (structs) relate. Here's an
example: <http://golang.org/pkg/database/sql/>

>Ultimately, Vim benefits me with overall productivity

...and it's not just coding where vim increases productivity. I can't count
the number nights I've spent writing essays or final papers in college with
nothing more than vim, ispell, and the book I'm reporting on. When editing
text becomes reflexive it is so much easier to express oneself.

------
spudlyo
As an emacs user, I'm pretty happy to mostly not have this problem.

All of the command-line apps I depend on either use GNU readline (which has
flawless emacs style editing) or can be hacked to do so with the rlwrap
utility. Furthermore since many of the NeXTSTEP hackers were also emacs users,
OSX text input widgets inherited very solid (although the kill ring is
lacking) keyboard binding support which makes it possible for me to
comfortably emacs-style edit in native OSX apps.

Sometimes though stupid rich text input boxes used by wikis can annoyingly
rebind emacs keys, and then I fly into a fit of rage like the author
described. Luckily there is 'It's all text!' under Firefox or 'Edit with
Emacs' on Chrome that lets you use an external editor to edit the contents of
any web text widget, which I use to do all my wiki editing.

~~~
lloeki
> As an emacs user, I'm pretty happy to mostly not have this problem.

Wait till RSI kicks in. Vim was a real relief when chording became intolerable
(even with remaps like ctrl->caps).

~~~
spudlyo
I started to worry about this as I got older, so a few years ago I got a
Kinesis Advantage keyboard at work and home with the control and meta keys
mapped to the left thumb buttons backspace/delete. I was able to break the
left-pinky control habit by mapping my CAPSLOCK key to a noop.

The Kinesis took a few weeks to get used to, I sped up my progress by
competing in typing races on typeracer.com until my speed got back up, and
eventually surpassed my speed on a conventional keyboard. The square, curly,
and angle bracket keys took a lot longer to get used to, and it was months
before I got comfortable with them.

[http://kizzx2.com/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2012/06/layoutcont...](http://kizzx2.com/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2012/06/layoutcontour-win-usb.gif)

------
mwfunk
I'm as guilty as anyone of going deep on various editors and really getting
into the weeds of editor automation, configuration, and learning obscure
hotkeys and commands. Vim and emacs in particular are great for this. But
after many years of programming, I've become really skeptical of the value of
this approach. The amount of time I spend actually typing in code is utterly
dwarfed by the amount of time I spend thinking about what code should be typed
in. Spending lots of time memorizing editor-specific key sequences to save a
keystroke here and there is starting to look more and more like an illusion of
efficiency, or possibly a net loss if it means constantly having to reach for
refcards or struggling with an illusion of inefficiency when using other
editors. It makes a lot more sense for people who really do spend more time
typing code than thinking about code...I would be fascinated to see some sort
of survey as to what that ratio is for programmers in general, and how it
affects people's choice of tools.

~~~
LargeWu
Thank you. Programming is not an IO-bound problem, and if it is, you're not
doing anything interesting.

vim gives you ergonomic benefits? Sure, I can believe that. Allows you to
manipulate text faster? Ok. But, at least in my reality, text manipulation is
a rounding error when it comes to productivity. I simply do not buy the
argument that using vim improves your code, or the speed at which you can
write it.

~~~
JoshTriplett
I actually do find that text manipulation can become the bottleneck in the
right environment, at some points in a coding session. Vim won't make you
faster while staring at a pair of empty braces thinking about the right
algorithm. Vim _can_ make you faster while rewriting a function, moving code
around, or typing code that you've already thought through. And I often find
that the faster I can get a thought out and stop holding as much state in my
head, the faster the next idea comes.

------
moe
I have a much more interesting problem (I think!).

I wish Vim could read its configuration from a HTTP-URL passed in an
environment-variable:

    
    
      REMOTE_DOTVIM=https://foobar.com/dotvim
    

I'm dealing with many dozens of hosts and getting my precious dotvim onto all
of them is outright impossible. Especially on accounts shared with other
people.

There are hacks around it, but they are nasty (pasting a script, aliasing
stunts).

I realize the chances for actually getting this feature are rather slim. But
gosh would it make my day...

~~~
bcrescimanno
would something like this not work?

curl <http://url.to/vimrc> | vim -u -

~~~
moe
Plain curl unfortunately doesn't cut it because that misses .vim, which
contains all the goods (plugins etc.).

But yes, in essence that's what I'm doing right now, just instead of curl I
rsync the entire dotvim and then run 'vim -u' (plus a few other vars).

It gets the job done (usually), but it's an extra-hoop that I wish I wouldn't
have to take. More than once I've had the alias that I setup with the pastie
fail for one reason or another, which then sets me back a couple minutes, torn
between fixing it yet again or just moving on with plain vim.

~~~
bcrescimanno
I use a dotfiles repository on Github to easily get my Vim environment set up
on a new machine.

You mentioned the notion of shared machines; I'm resisting the urge to go on a
rant about the inherent "badness" of sharing a single login across multiple
people in what is a multi-user environment. The whole point of a user account
is to be able to set things up the way you want them.

~~~
moe
_"badness" of sharing a single login_

That's the age-old discussion about to what degree one should sanction user-
logins to production-hosts and whether permission/sudo-hell is preferable over
the alternative.

It doesn't quite belong here so let's just assume the classic case of
"bootstrap gone awry" where you're left with root, vanilla vim, and a semi-
rational desire to have your fancy syntax-highlighting while you fix up that
partition table. ;)

------
drkevorkian
In terms of Vi(m!) emulation, emacs' evil-mode
(<http://emacswiki.org/emacs/Evil>) is pretty damn complete. The only real
issue is properly integrating it with the rest of your Emacs environment.

~~~
Symmetry
Yeah, the only things I _really_ miss on that are ctrl-i and ctrl-o.

------
selectnull
Yup. Ctrl W kills me while I write something inside a browser and want to
delete a word I've... oh, there goes a tab.

~~~
sp332
I realize it's still annoying but you can Ctrl-Shift-T to get a tab back,
usually with the partially-filled form intact.

~~~
dredmorbius
Or use vimperator (or its replacement whose name escapes me). 'd' deletes a
tab (as will C-w), 'u' "undeletes" it.

History made marvelously easy. This alone sold me on the extension.

~~~
npongratz
Are you perhaps referring to Pentadactyl[1]? I'm a huge fan of it.

[1] <http://5digits.org/help/pentadactyl/>

~~~
dredmorbius
Thanks, yes. I'd seen it referenced here, haven't used it.

Vimperator still works on my somewhat age'd 14.0 FF.

------
bstar77
My biggest problem with Vim is the muscle memory I have developed where I hit
[esc] after writing text. The problem is that in most programs outside of vim,
[esc] means to cancel the operation. Try renaming a file and set it with
[esc].

~~~
thiderman
This is avoidable if you use Ctrl-C instead of escape. It works identical to
[esc] in all ways except one (the InsertLeave autocommand will not be
triggered). If you remap Caps lock to Ctrl, you even get a more ergonomic way
of escape, since you don't need to move your hand the way you would to press
[esc].

~~~
tincholio
Actually, ESC is also available as CTRL-[ If you have CTRL remapped to CAPS
LOCK, then it's very simple to use.

------
chrisdone
> Two years ago, a heavy bout of coding gave me some wicked wrist problems,
> and an ergo expert recommended I switch to vim.

That is not an ergo expert. An ergo expert would tell you to stop typing with
your wrists bent and resting them on your desk or keyboard “wrist pad” or
whatever nonsense. Your hands should hover over the keyboard. I have never,
ever had wrist pain and I type _a lot_. I'm not an ergo expert, I just type
with proper form as recommended in any credible health & safety or posture
guide.

~~~
slurgfest
There is more involved than typing words, e.g.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Emacs#Emacs_Pinky>

~~~
tincholio
Which can be trivially solved by moving CTRL to the CAPS LOCK position

------
robfig
I can't help feeling sorry for all these poor people that use Emacs with their
control key in the wrong spot (bottom left).

Remap Control to Caps Lock and there are no ergo issues at all.

~~~
dredmorbius
It's far less the control key than the meta key for me.

I don't use emacs except once in a blue moon, but do use readline / emacs-
style bash commandline editing. The ctrl-mapped features (and yes, I swap
capslock/ctrl) are easy. The meta ones ... not so much.

~~~
koenigdavidmj
As a random bit of trivia, tapping esc followed by another key counts as
hitting meta for that key. It might be easier to simply slap 'esc x' than try
to chord alt-x.

------
bsphil
As a dirty non-vim-using heathen trying to correct the error of my ways, I'm
having trouble adjusting. Is there a good reason to use hjkl for moving the
cursor that I'm not aware of by virtue of knowing nothing else? Why not jkl;
or ijkl?

~~~
mattkirman
This may just be an urban myth but afaik Vim uses hjkl because the terminal[1]
that it was originally used to write Vi had a keyboard where the arrows were
on those same keys.

Also, the escape key was in the place of the modern day tab key making
switching modes much easier.

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADM-3A>

------
msl
This is obviously a problem with getting used to anything you can't always
rely on. Vim addiction made me try Pentadactyl and now I find it incredibly
painful to use a browser without similiar functionality. It's also unpleasant
to use a keyboard whose Caps Lock hasn't been mapped to act as an Esc.

By building your workflow around Vim (or anything else) you can gain a lot but
you also become a prisoner to it. I suppose it's about trading flexibility for
power. Thus far it seems to have been net win.

It also seems that you can't see this from outside, which leads to people
recommending their own tools for everyone else.

------
kamaal
Learning an editor is not like learning typing. You should learn an editor but
not be addicted to it. This is just like learning a language.

The reason is software tools evolve really fast. And you will always get
somethings better than what was available in the past. And you will always
have to move on. Why get so addicted and get into the editor religion?

If you look at the way people program in verbose languages these days, they
heavily depend on a lot of goodies like auto complete and intellisense. The
tooling area is always evolving with time. And not moving with the trend will
keep you locked in ancient practices.

The way I see, Editor religion works very similar to version control religion.
People really take tools too seriously. When I look at vi/emacs vs something
else debate. To me it looks like git/mercurial vs svn etc debates. There is
not reason to take that personally, they are just tools after all. I look at a
version control system as something that keeps track of my change history. An
editor as something that helps me be productive. Those things keep changing
with time.

Don't take them so personally that you have to tear your hair out in
frustration when they are not available. They are a means to achieve your
goal. Using them is not your goal.

~~~
haldean
This is exactly my point, though; being efficient at Vim is unlike using any
other editor, and you've invested so much into gaining that muscle memory it's
very, very hard to convince yourself that other tools are better. In some way,
I am addicted to the efficiency and succinctness of Vim.

------
tomrod
Maybe I just don't code enough. I see little advantage to vim or emacs over,
say, gedit or kate. What am I missing (besides a need for esoteric hotkeys)?

~~~
ulyssesgrant
By calling them esoteric, you've demonstrated what you are missing. The
keyboard shortcuts are made in such a way that they should feel natural with
regard to the task they accomplish. Once you master enough of them, you won't
believe how fast you can type and edit code.

~~~
snprbob86
I'd argue that it has nothing to do with how fast I can type or edit code. It
has to do with how fast I can express ideas.

Just like I've learned to express ideas in various programming languages, I've
learned to express ideas in Vim. Those ideas are within the domain of text
manipulations. Even if I spent the same overall amount of time manipulating
text (I don't) the process of getting from point A to point B is smoother and
costs me less mental energy. That energy savings translates into better code.

One thing to note here is that, just as with any other notation, there is a
learning curve. You must learn the essential complexities of the problem
domain, as well as the accidental complexities of the notation. That learning
requires deep understanding of fundamentals, memorization of idiosyncrasies,
and practice, practice, practice. This is true in mathematics, spoken
languages, written languages, programming languages, sheet music, and all the
rest!

~~~
ulyssesgrant
I don't think the two ideas you are talking about are mutually exclusive. I
type and edit code faster in vim, and I'm able to accomplish tasks and put
down my thoughts faster as well. One lets me accomplish the other, and vice
versa.

~~~
snprbob86
You're right. Hence why I wrote:

> Even if I spent the same overall amount of time manipulating text (I don't)

I'm just saying that faster code editing is a side effect of -- or the
aggregate view of -- smoother thinking and faster thought expression.

------
thiderman
As a big fan of vim and the hjkl paradigm, I've tried many of the plugins that
try to make other software more vim-like. While I can fully understand the
feelings of haldean, I've never felt it myself.

I'm pretty sure this is due to my expectations. I've never expected anything
other than vim to have vim-like _editor_ capabilities. Just having hjkl
navigation is a major plus for me, and anything else is mostly gravy. Another
thing I've found is that most of the plugins (at least the browser ones) are
quite configurable, and if I'm not happy with or missing a keybinding, I'm
free to modify or add it. I never liked gt and gT for tab switching, so I use
zh and zl in vim and in my browsers, and AFAIK all of them (vimperator,
pentadactyl, vimium, vim-chrome) allowed me to use them.

btw, an honorable mention should probably go to tmux, since it's copy buffers
in vi-mode have pretty flawless vim-likeness.

------
dredmorbius
If you really want to experience frustration as a vim user, try working on a
legacy proprietary Unix box with nothing but old-school vi on it.

If you simply want the breadth of experience without access to such a system,
the 'nvi' package (available on most Linux systems) promises to be bug-for-bug
compatible with BSD vi.

~~~
ibotty
it's not that bad either...

------
padobson
The only thing I use Vim for is coding. I use gedit for taking notes and
logging my hours. I use OpenOffice/LibreOffice for documents, spreadsheets,
invoices, etc. I use the web for most every type of communication from
blogging to email to HN comments.

But when I'm coding, I'm in Vim mode. Moving between the two is much easier
because I'm so used to it.

Almost everything is about mobility to me. I want to be able to sit down at
any computer and accomplish my workflow the same way I do at any computer I
own. Thus, the web and plain text are my friends. This was also the reason I
started using Vim in the first place - I know it'll be on any linux box I ever
use.

------
xyzzyb
Switching to vim made me switch to Firefox from Chrome so I could install
Vimperator.

~~~
yogsototh
I also came from vimperator, and now I use pentadactyl. You should give it a
try if you don't already know it.

~~~
xyzzyb
I actually used pentadactyl first, but the bugs grew too much for me so I
switched.

<http://www.wikivs.com/wiki/Pentadactyl_vs_Vimperator>

~~~
osener
I've been using Pentadactyl with bleeding edge Firefox since its first days
and I definitely agree with you.

Pentadactyl doesn't support Firefox 15+ so I had to downgrade to a more stable
channel with every major Firefox release. After I ended up in the stable
release with no Firefox 15+ support in sight I began looking for alternatives
and to my surprise Vimperator is still alive and kicking (3.5 got released six
days ago)!

I don't get runtime errors anymore, it looks and performs much better (not
sure if I should attribute the performance increase to newer Firefox) and has
way better UX choices (like how minibuffer overlays the page instead of
resizing it with every keypress which has a performance impact with heavy
webpages)

I suggest every Pentadactyl user who doesn't need the better vim compatibility
or extended configuration options to check Vimperator out, its still in
development and certainly didn't get abandoned or superseded by Pentadactyl
despite what people are suggesting.

------
hboon
It's a problem all vi users have, don't we?

~~~
dchest
I don't have this problem, just like I don't have a problem with typing both
English and Russian on a single keyboard: my brain have learned to switch
contexts. I don't use vim-like plugins for anything. :wq

~~~
mediocregopher
Slightly related: There were a couple days way back that I really wanted to
learn to type on a dvorak keyboard (later lost interest). One of my friends
was doing the same (he also later lost interest) and gave me the tip that I
should figure out which thumb I generally press spacebar with when typing on a
qwerty board (my right thumb) and use my opposite thumb when typing dvorak. I
found this worked really well, I was able to seemlessly switch between my
mostly-incompetent dvorak typing and my good qwerty typing without any mental
effort.

~~~
batista
Dvorak superiority is actually a urban legend.

~~~
andreasvc
Oh come on, you have all your vowels and other frequent letters right there on
the home row. There might have been some issues with the studies that were
supposed to show Dvorak's superiority, but if you take a cursory glance at the
layout it should be immediately obvious that your fingers will need to travel
less because the layout conforms much better to the observed frequencies in
most languages.

~~~
batista
Vowels and frequent letters? For one I am a programmer, not a writer --my
frequent keys are widely different than a typist's.

Second, who said having the all on the home row is better? Studies --nit
Dvorak's own-- have shown marginal or no improvement compared to qwerty, ven
for typists.

~~~
andreasvc
Identifiers in source code are typically base on words, so will share the same
distribution of English text to some degree. It should be easy to make a
program that takes any text file, and for each character notes how far your
fingers would have to move from the home row on a certain layout. This could
then quantify the distance on qwerty vs. dvorak. That would provide an
interesting empirical verification of this issue.

About the having keys on the home row, I certainly claim it is better, and you
should try it for yourself. I will concede that it may not give a speed
increase for a seasoned typist, I suspect that at a certain point when
everything is in muscle memory it doesn't matter anymore. However, having to
move your fingers less is simply less straining, so it will be more
comfortable. This was not measured in those studies, so that's why I think
they are not relevant.

------
beothorn
The site don't show without javascript. Why do I need it just to read text?

------
priomsrb
I think it would be cool to have a vi/vim engine that can be added onto
editors. The editor would only have to overload simple functions like
keyPressed(key), getChar(pos), setChar(pos, c), etc, and the engine would take
care of the rest of the vi/vim emulation.

This approach would be better because there will be a single effort rather
than each editor writing its own vi/vim mode. Also when a new feature is added
to the engine it would be available on all editors.

------
stuffihavemade
The only vim plugin that I've used that's an acceptable vim substitute is
viemu (<http://www.viemu.com/>).

------
ansible
As far as vim with Eclipse goes, I tried out eclim, but I didn't like it too
much. You loose features like being able to click on source code lines to
create a breakpoint.

I've only used it lightly, but I've been pleased with vrapper so far:

<http://vrapper.sourceforge.net/home/>

It is also conveniently installable from the Eclipse marketplace.

------
woodchuck64
Despite decades of vi use, I'm ashamed to say I didn't know what cf" was.

cf" : change(c) forward(f) to double-quote(")

~~~
selectnull
I remember the time I learned that one, it was great. To save you the time, I
will tell you even mightier incantation:

ct"

Changes Till "

~~~
sea6ear
I wish Emacs this ability by default.

I know it has zap-to-char but that works like cf" not ct". Of course that can
be modified with a bit of elisp, but I wish it provided it out of the box.

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tammer
I've still got faith that with enough patience the editor itself can be made
ubiquitous.

Pentadactyl is perfect because it creates it's own verbs. Once you grok that a
tab is it's own buffer it works as supplement to vim, not as replacement.

The rest is all zshell/vim.

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sigzero
When I had my documents (done in Word) in at work I also get the discrepancy
report that says there are unneeded :w all over the place.

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supervacuo
So your biggest problem with VIM is that pseudo-VIM plugins _for other
software_ aren't implemented very well? Right...

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cfcluan
I knwo<Esc>xio<Esc>A exactly what you are talking about.<Esc>ogot iy?<Esc>hrt

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jryan49
My biggest problem with vim is that vim plugins are not nearly as extensive or
well developed as Emacs's.

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__alexs
I have this in my .vimrc

imap <C-a> <Esc>^I

imap <C-e> <Esc>A

imap <C-k> <Esc>d$A

imap <C-y> <Esc>pA

Yes I am a heathen.

~~~
bcrescimanno
Yes, yes you are. :P

In all honesty, a lot of Vim users set up some of these same shortcuts for
editing their commands since chording is really the only way to get to some of
that functionality--and as long as you're going to use chords, why not use
Emacs-style?

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munchor
I have this problem with Emacs.

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kingmanaz
Vimperator/Pentadactyl's numbered links are doing the same thing for me. Hit
the "f" key and anything "clickable" on the screen is overlaid with a number.
Type the number and enter and you've "clicked" it. It's ingenious.

I dream of an entire OS supporting this.

Regarding Vim fluency spoiling IDEs, I could not bear writing C# code in VS
without purchasing the $99 ViEmu ...and that's coming from someone that drives
a 1987 F-150.

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shootthemoon
My biggest problem with vim is the fanboy base. You all are worse then mac
users. (typed from my mbp) Get over it, its an editor, a tool, not the end
product.

~~~
tree_of_item
Vim _is_ an end product, just like Photoshop is an end product: a better
environment for creators to create things. It's not wrong to talk about it.

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na85
So, his biggest problem with vim is that he's not used to vim and used to
another editor.

Got it.

~~~
rmk2
No. His problem is that not every editor is vim. Or at least like vim.

