Empowering Vim Editor
(based on version 7.1)
by
Joydeep Bakshi
14-SEP-2007

Copyright and License

Credits

Vim is the most advanced editor in linux/unix world. But its default settings are according to the vi editor hence hides its tremendous capabilities. Some times Vim is the only editor which we can use, like in remote header less system or in system which intentionally avoid graphics to provide its full strength to the servers daemons. What ever may be the situation; vim can be configured in such a way that specifically addresses all the features just we need. Vim reads the .vimrc from the home directory. Once we configure the .vimrc according to our requirements; editing by Vim will simply be a great joy. I have written this document to show you amazingly useful features of the vim editor in console mode and how a properly configured .vimrc makes text editing with Vim a peace of mind.

This is not a tutorial to make you familiar with Vim or teach you how to use Vim. If you are not a regular Vim user then this document is not for you. More over I have written this guide specially for console mode operation of Vim.

Nothing !!! All the features focused here are inbuilt in the Vim. Though it is not impossible but memorising all the keyboard operation of console-mode is difficult. Hence Vim provides keymap facility so that user can define its own keymap according to its own choice. I have exploited this feature and made easily memorable keymap to some frequent as well as important Vim commands. More over bypassing the default console-mode menu I have written a modified console-mode menu; called .vim_menu adding only those commands which I fell must be there. This way user don't need to remember those commands and need to access the menu only. To achieve all these I have written some easily understood functions in the .vimrc and .vim_menu

To beautify the look I have made some Vim options as default like highlighting the current line etc..

Vim 7.1 You can download source from http://www.vim.org/sources.php
pdftotext to read PDF files within Vim
Python to support scientific calculator within Vim

Vim sets its behavior according to the .vimrc. It first checks home directory for .vimrc and failing to get one it reads the global .vimrc file. Vim needs menu.vim to support the console-mode menu. I have created a .vimrc to place in the home directory and .vim_menu to support the console-mode menu.

• Download my compressed script file from http://post.linuxology.in/Linux_tutorial/Vim/Installer.bz2

• extract the Installer by bunzip2 Installer.bz2

• Set the executable permission by chmod u+x Installer

• Now Execute the Installer as ./Installer

• Disable vi compatible mode

• Syntax highlighting

• command-line completion with wildmenu support

• Incremental search

• Activating backspace in insert mode

• Automatically set execute permission to shell-scripts and perl files

• Easy to remember key mapping

• Executing multiple command-lines with single key mapping

• Easy to remember keys in Visual mode

• Line highlighting in both insert and command-line mode

• Display line number in both insert and command-line mode (Toggle mode)

• Display non printable character (Toggle mode)

• Visualbell support (Toggle mode)

• Different color of status line in insert and normal mode

• Modified status line

• Inbuilt PDF reader

• Inbuilt python based Scientific Calculator

• Tab Support

• Support Leader (leader character and keys are case sensitive)

• Press F1 (Toggle mode) (insert, command-line and normal mode) to comment/uncomment line. It automatically assigns the comment character based on the file type. Select multiple lines from visual mode and then press F1 to comment those.

• Press F2 (insert, command-line and normal mode) to toggle spell checking. In Spell checking mode syntax highlighting will be disabled, <up> and <down> keys will be mapped to point the Badspell words. <left > key call aspell and <right> key call Vim7's inbuilt spell checker. After leaving the Spell checking mode syntax highlighting will be activated and <up> <down> keys again remapped to line highlighting mode. <left> and <right> keys will be unmapped to its default behavior.

• Press F12 (insert,command-line and normal mode) to open shell from Vim; exit command closes the shell and take you back into Vim :-)

• Press F4 (insert,command-line and normal mode) to call Console-mode menu

• Easy menu-style switch between files with a simple map. Switching to a different file is made easier with F5 (insert, command-line and normal mode). Modified "abandoned" buffers get a "+" in the buffer list

• Easy to remember key mapping, we can now execute command-line from insert mode and automatically come back into insert mode

		Ctrl+U		(insert, command-line and normal mode)	(U)ndo changes 
		Ctrl+R		(insert, command-line and normal mode)	(R)edo changes
		Ctrl+G		(insert, command-line and normal mode)	up(G)rade or save changes
		Ctrl+E		(insert, command-line and normal mode)	(E)xit after save
		Ctrl+A		(insert, command-line and normal mode)	Save (A)ll and exit
		Ctrl+N		(insert, command-line and normal mode)	(N)o save and exit
		Ctrl+L		(insert, command-line and normal mode)	(L)ine number display (Toggle mode) 
		Ctrl+B 		(insert, command-line and normal mode)	visual(B)ell support (Toggle mode) 
		Ctrl+H 		(insert, command-line and normal mode)	(H)idden character (Toggle mode) 
		Ctrl+D		(insert, command-line and normal mode)	(D)elete line under cursor
		Ctrl+F		(insert, command-line and normal mode)	(F)ile explorer in new tab
 

• Easy Tab operation

		<leader>+t	(insert, command-line and normal mode)	(T)ab open
		<leader>+<left> (insert, command-line and normal mode)	Previous Tab 
		<leader>+<right>(insert, command-line and normal mode)	Next Tab
		<leader>+<up>	(insert, command-line and normal mode)	First Tab
		<leader>+<down>	(insert, command-line and normal mode)	Last Tab 
		<leader>+a	(insert, command-line and normal mode)	Show (A)ll Tabs
		<leader>+g	(insert, command-line and normal mode)	(G)o to Tab page
		(Just enter the tab page number after the tabn command)
		<leader>+e	(insert, command-line and normal mode)	Save and (E)xist current Tab

	Example : I have set lowercase z as leader. So pressing zt will open a tab

• Easy Folding operation

		<leader>+f	(visual mode)				(F)old visually selected text 
		<leader>+o	(insert,command-line and normal mode)	(O)pen the fold under cursor
		<leader>+d	(insert,command-line and normal mode)	(D)elete the fold under cursor

• Easy cut/copy/paste/delete in visual mode

		Ctrl+V		(insert and command-line mode)		start (V)isual mode (Toggle)
		Ctrl+C 							(C)opy selected words/lines in visual mode
		Ctrl+P							(P)aste copied information in visual mode 
		Ctrl+X							Cut selected words/lines in visual mode 
		press Delete to delete selected words/lines in visual mode
		

• Line wrap/nowrap (Toggle mode) by <leader>+w

• Information of comment-box is controlled by s:Abbr() function. You have to modify the information like your name, email adress etc. You can also add more information in s:Abbr() function but remember to add corresponding entry in s:UnAbbr() function.

Vim 7.1 has some extra features and variables which are not available in Vim prior to version 7.1 I don't know if my .vimrc works with prior Vim 7.1 Please let me know if you test.

You can modify the .vimrc and .vim_menu as per your choice. You can add more keymap and leader switches but they should not conflict with the existing keymap and leader keys of .vimrc. Some of keymaps already having some purpose in Vim. Like F1 by-default calls the help page in Vim but I am using F1 to comment/uncomment current line. So you should be aware about the side effect of remapping any key.

To check a misconfigured .vimrc use "vim -Nu NONE .vimrc" to bypass the loading of .vimrc from the home directory

If the remote server has running SSH daemon and your machine also has SSH client then you can open remote file by the command

		vim scp://hostname/path/to/file 
				or 
		vim scp://hostname#<ssh-port>/path/to/file 

If you have ssh-agent then you can enjoy remote editing without typing password of the remote machine

If you like to save the modified file at the remote location then execute :Nwrite from command-line mode. Otherwise simple :x will save the file in the local machine

Line Highlight

Line Number

Multiple Tab

Working with Tab

Visual selection

Highlihting mis-spelled words

Spelling correction

File Explorer

We are going to create a fold

Folding

Showing non-printable

Console-mode menu

Ruler

Command line completion with tab