s/vim
After decades of using random editors and emacs I've switched to vim. So why not have a place to share a tip or bitch about weird things vim does (or fails to do)? Put short tips and discoveries under TIPS topic; for anything that warrants its own discussion, please start a new topic.
Posts
— Using Vim with a Knowledge Base
Knowledge Base management with Vim — I'm putting this up for a Vim carnival held by a lazy bear: [https link]
💬 1 comment · 2 likes · Apr 29 · 8 days ago · #note_taking #productivity
Drew Devault forks Vim — [https link] An AI-free branch.
💬 21 comments · 1 like · Mar 25 · 6 weeks ago
Sheet (TSV, CSV) editing in Vim? — I have a few TSV files that have a few columns, but a lot of rows. I bumped into sc-im, which seems okay, but it got me thinking: is there a mode plugin for Vim that would render a TSV or CSV nicely, with columns and sticky headers and stuff? Because there's a million plugins, I actually haven't found any that I would immediately trust, hence this topic, looking for recommendations It's a bit funny, but the only reason I'm looking for something based on Vim...
💬 1 comment · Mar 09 · 8 weeks ago
fab/find-vimwiki-words.nvim plugin — For all you NeoVim VimWiki users out there: I wrote a plugin to do a fulltext search through your VimWiki files with Telescope. You can also exclude files with words prefixed with "!". For example: 'log !sunday updates !neovim' will find all files containing the words "Log" and "Updates" but will exclude files with the words 'Sunday' or 'NeoVim'. As long as you only type lower case letters the search is case-insensitive. You can also group words with double...
💬 1 like · 2025-10-04 · 7 months ago
The sickest regex I've ever used so far — Had a bunch of attributes for ui widgets (same thing as properties in css basically) with c99-style struct initializers that all looked like this: [preformatted] Then I finally got fed up with these long definitions, and decided to just convert them into the following macro form: [preformatted] So basically the same but shorter. And the following command does just that: [preformatted] Pretty sick for a command that was actually used and not just...
💬 4 comments · 3 likes · 2025-05-07 · 1 year ago
Tried Helix... Meh. — Out of sheer frustration (having deleted a bunch of stuff because Shift Lock was engaged), loaded Helix and gave it a shot. It's not going to save me from my sloppy typing, of course. But why not take a look. It took me about 15 minutes to decide. It's pretty nice, but I am entirely the wrong demographic. It is extremely dependent on the LSP infrastructure. Alas, there is no implementation for ca65 6502 assembler, or any assembler other than NASM. There is weakness of the...
💬 5 comments · 1 like · 2024-11-09 · 1 year ago
it's vim's 33rd birthday today — happy birthday vim.
💬 1 comment · 1 like · 2024-11-02 · 2 years ago
Always off by 1! Is it me? — I love vim, but perhaps I am using it wrong! Whenever I do just about anything, I am pretty much always off by one character. In the simplest case, if I enter the instert mode and exit it, I am no longer on the same character! If I do it repeatedly, the cursor will crawl backwards. Whenever I yank and paste, I invariably wind up one character past where I wanted to paste. I thought I would get used to it eventually, but it's now been years and I am constantly '...
💬 18 comments · 2 likes · 2024-10-30 · 2 years ago
VIM Productivity Vs Time — [Vim Vs other IDE for productivity over time]
💬 5 comments · 1 like · 2024-09-06 · 2 years ago · #ascii_art #IDE #plot #productivity
Vim, the editor, the notekeeper and the IDE — Some of the vim shorcuts which gets used a lot has become past of the muscle memory after few years of using vim. I am still learning new functionality almost everyday. Its like knowing someone very well and still be surprised every now and then after finding out new and interesting things about them. Vim is familiar, moving hand to the mouse feels weird when using any other text editor. Few days ago I had to use a Windows machine (😧), and I had to...
💬 8 comments · 3 likes · 2024-08-28 · 2 years ago · #note_taking
Q: Abbreviations, but only at beginning of line — I just wasted an hour searching for a way to create an iabbrev that triggers only at beggining of line. Say I want to convert a '===' to a '/*====================*/, but if and only if the === was typed at the start of its own line. Is that even possible?
💬 1 comment · 2023-12-28 · 2 years ago
Vim as an IDE — A combination of tmux and vim makes a minimal REPL IDE. I managed to cobble it together in a few minutes in spite of knowing nothing about vimscript and nearly nothing about tmux. My workflow is this: I open tmux and split it into at least two panes. The first one is where I run my Forth in, and according to tmux the pane is named '%0'. The second one is for vim. Now I need vim to send paragraphs of source into pane %0, as if they were typed. Tmux has a function 'send-keys'...
💬 3 comments · 4 likes · 2023-09-16 · 3 years ago
Kakoune - weird bindings I'm kind of trying to use kakoune, because I kind of like the idea of selecting then acting. But it's slow going, and I am not yet grokking it. I am also annoyed by the reliance on Alt-key combinations - the whole point of a modal editor is to use regular keys in normal mode...
💬 5 comments · 2023-09-13 · 3 years ago
Vim spirit — I've spent a few minutes with Kakoune (what a name) and Helix. Feels a bit like an infidelity, but it's really not. Each of these is not the 'vi', but it is a 'vi', the way my franken-forths are still Forths. Kak and hx get many things more right than vim: object/action order: the ability to select (and see the selection) first then act on the selection(s). It's really the right way to go about editing text, and there are many articles on the subject that do the argument more...
💬 1 comment · 1 like · 2023-09-09 · 3 years ago
Off by 1 character — I hate that vim is always off by a character. Let me clarify. When you exit the insert mode, the cursor backs up to the last character entered. So if you insert some text, then delete to the end of the line, vim will eat your last-inserted character unless you move over one. Annoying, right? Or, say you repeatedly enter insert mode then exit back to command line. That is a no-op, right? Wrong: your cursor will move left one character. That seems kind of idiotic. Does...
💬 12 comments · 1 like · 2023-09-04 · 3 years ago
Which config/plugins do you use for writing Gemtext? — I'm not really sure about, the only thing I set so far is that the text should wrap on the terminal border, but I want to set it to wrap at column 80. I don't know how you edit your gemtext files, are there any plugins, syntax highlighters or the like? Or is there even a dedicated editor for gemtext? Pls let me kno!
💬 4 comments · 2023-08-14 · 3 years ago
I want to have completion for my custom C language headers, but I cannot see how to add it. I use CoC and it does help with the language headers, but not the ones in my project folder. How can I add them?
💬 9 comments · 2023-08-07 · 3 years ago
The author and maintainer of Vim, Bram Molenaar, passed away today. Thank you, Bram, for such a wonderful program that has stood the test of time. :wq
💬 7 comments · 2023-08-05 · 3 years ago
Quitting VIM — Nothing new, but a quick review: [preformatted]
💬 3 comments · 4 likes · 2023-07-16 · 3 years ago
A long time ago I had the idea of changing vim keybinds such that each operation would have its dual as capital. most operations such as fF do this already. I wanted to do it for everything including movement. In the end it was too non standard given any reduction in complexity, didn't work for special characters, and it was unclear what dual meant (e.g. iI vs oO vs aA).
💬 1 like · 2023-07-08 · 3 years ago
I wrote a plugin to use vim as a smallnet client frontend. You need a backend that formats things ok for it. Lynx works if you want web/gopher. I wrote a backend that supports gemini as well (and supports 10 gemini and 7 gopher types for input). It works pretty well so far. [https link] Plugin [https link] Custom Backend From the plugin folder run `make` and you are all set. The backend requires a go compiler (the plugin defaults to using lynx). For info on customization, get help in vim: [...
💬 2 likes · 2023-07-07 · 3 years ago
Editing Near-ASCII Binary Files — I am experimenting with a near-ASCII file format containing text messages and binary markers (high bit set). Vim is surprisingly useful: it will display files in a reasonable-for-debugging way by displaying hex values for high characters. It preserves these during editing, and will even allow you to enter non-ascii characters: In Insert mode, [preformatted] will insert 0xAB. o will similarly take 3 octal digits. Just numbers for decimal digits.
💬 1 comment · 1 like · 2023-07-07 · 3 years ago
Configuration tricks, tips, etc.
💬 8 comments · 2023-07-04 · 3 years ago
What is the best way to write a plugin in Lua and C? — I wrote a plugin to use Vim as a hex editor. As there is quite a bit of computation to do I prefered not to do them in Vimscript. As the hex editor will manipulate arbitrary data and not text, Lua seemed a better choice than Python as the strings don't need to contain only Unicode characters. As some functions do heavy computation, I wrote them in C for the very substantial speed boost. Unfortunately, compiling the C librairy is not...
💬 3 comments · 2023-07-02 · 3 years ago
TIPS — [http link] [https link] [https link]
💬 6 comments · 2023-07-01 · 3 years ago