An anthropological account of the Vim text editor: features and tweaks after 10 years of usage
This is an incremental guide for Vim users of all experience levels, offering a reference document based on personal usage.
The paper presents a personal account of using the Vim text editor over ten years, detailing features and tweaks for various document types, but does not report any specific results or numbers.
The Vim text editor is very rich in capabilities and thus complex. This article is a description of Vim and a set of considerations about its usage and design. It results from more than ten years of experience in using Vim for writing and editing various types of documents, e.g. Python, C++, JavaScript, ChucK programs; \LaTeX, Markdown, HTML, RDF, Make and other markup files; % TTM binary files. It is commonplace, in the Vim users and developers communities, to say that it takes about ten years to master (or start mastering) this text editor, and I find that other experienced users have a different view of Vim and that they use a different set of features. Therefore, this document exposes my understandings in order to confront my usage with that of other Vim users. Another goal is to make available a reference document with which new users can grasp a sound overview by reading it and the discussions that it might generate. Also, it should be useful for users of any degree of experience, including me, as a compendium of commands, namespaces and tweaks. Upon feedback, and maturing of my Vim usage, this document might be enhanced and expanded.