word processor users when they try vim (me):
When $EDITOR is vim, but I expected anything else:
opens file, with small text on the top; text begins changing; text duplicates in size, then triples; text returns to original size; text increases in size to fit several screens…
Then my great reflexes kick on and I notice something wrong :)
Do you prefer when EDITOR is set to emacs?
Personally, yes. But the default being nano is very sensible.
The default should be mcedit. Much more usable than nano
I ideally with evil installed and easily toggleabkw with M-x evil-mode<enter>
for accessibikity purposes
First few time I opened vim (will neovim) I failed to see how to enter a command, and closed the window to get out of it
I will legitimately go esc, :w, i on Google Docs to try and save the document…
Escape in some email clients cancels a new email. I had to retype many emails before email clients began auto-saving drafts.
The paiiiin! How many hours I lost because of this?
Spoiler
Probably less than I used to configure my neovim…
my work client cancels the new mail without there being a draft, though that may be because of muscle memory pressing a key combo after esc. its major pain o7
I often xs on graphic IDEs too.
On most of them, it works if you don’t have any text selected. The Microsoft ones do really weird things.
Explain pls for us vimless noobs
Direction navigation in vim is hjkl.
I know I’m just a vim-less heathen, but using letters for navigation in a text editor seems kind stupid when arrows exist.
No, you’re 100% right. The only reason it’s this way is this: https://pikuma.com/blog/origins-of-vim-text-editor
These literally were the arrow keys on the machine that vim was originally developed on.
Why the hell didn’t they go with JIKL or something instead then, so the pattern at least resembles the direction it navigates?
Wasd was revolutionary at the time
This really just shows how fundamentally terrible product developers engineers are.
I remember going from using Z/X/C+mouse2 for left/backpedal/right+forward WASD was such an adjustment
so your finges dont have to leave the home row. Its acually peak when you used hjkl for some time
You should boycott vim. That’ll teach 'em.
The reason it’s so popular is because it provides directional navigation on the home row, with the direction that’s by far the most common (down) under your strongest, dominant finger (the index finger).
It’s much better for both efficiency and ergonomics than arrow keys.
moving my hand this much SUCKS
Instead of using the arrow keys most vi & him users navigate the cursor around the doc by using letter keys. I do it so subcociously now I am not sure which direction is the
jwhen I use my phone.But keyboards have arrow keys now?
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I’m one of the noobs. You use letter keys to navigate around text?
Vim has several modes. INSERT mode let’s you write text, NORMAL mode let’s you navigate (with h,j,k,l and others) and perform operations on the text with your keyboard, like “dw” to Delete Word or “A” to enter insert mode at the end of the line.
You can use arrow keys to navigate in insert mode. However I just press escape, which changes to normal, navigate to where I want to, then change to insert mode.
I may seem like this makes simple navigation complex, and it kinda does. But complex navigation becomes easier.
Vi (and vim and neovim)'s primary concern is viewing and editing code, writing is secondary (although it’s still an excellent experience)
Oh, I did not know of ‘A’ before. Hopefully I can train myself to use it.
I use ‘O’ the most. It inserts a newline at the end of the line and starts Insert Mode after the newline.
Awesome. After many years of vim-use I learned about CTRL+n as well. A game changer.
And while we’re at it, I also installed vim-nox to be able to use vim-snippets with utilsnips to TAB for even more joy of programming with vim. [=
Yes, (neo)vi(m) has different modes, in
normalmode the characters are shortcuts, hjkl is used for navigation. However other methods are prefered, w, e, b - jumping words, f,t - jumping to a specific character etc. Its way faster. Also it can be combinedd2w(d)eletes the next (2) (w)ord. Or more advanceddi"(d)eletes the text (i)nside the “…”Insertmode is what you except: it writes what you type. Can be accessed by i - (i)nsert before a - (a)append after. Going back to normal mode is ESC (or many configure tab)
This is a problem for me on systems that only have nano installed. Gets me every time
I always uninstall nano on systems with not much users. On the more busy and established servers, I need to leave it as-is and I have to adjust when
visudoopensnanoand I forgot to putEDITOR=vimin front of it.Can’t uninstall it or my coworkers would go nuts. On systems with separate users, I can set it via .bashrc, but on shared user systems … Well. Above happens.
20Gwwbcwkurva<ESC>:wq
I cannot begin to describe how many times I’ve had to re-type the same info in some input form because I hit esc when I had first finished it!
It’s been so long since I worked on a machine where I couldn’t use the cursor keys in vi, I don’t think I’d even be able to anymore.
I only understand this reference because I worked for a company at one point that had a large number of NeXT and Solaris hosts that only had vi installed with letter key navigation, so my muscle memory does not use arrow keys.
Coders use word docs?
I’m not a programmer but I still open up notepad and write in markdown.
It’s just faster.
the collab feature of google docs is nice
ITT: People who don’t use vim and insist we have arrow keys now so don’t need hjkl anymore.
Here’s what my terminal usually looks like
@>vim srv/txt.txt Writes a bunch of lines of code/words/docker containers. [ESC] :sq Can’t edit file without sudo :q! @>sudo vim srv/txt.txt 🥹
Erm. This would be vi? vim has arrow key support.
Implying that vim users use arrows instead of hjkl? Blasphemy!
I do :p and I use vim a lot.
When I start a new roguelike:
Activate [j]ump ability, view [l]og, no item underfoot to mark for [k]eeping, [h]ide.
ting in vim I sometimes still forget I start in normal mode.
And they lived happier ever after.
THE END :wq!