On 6 March 2010 23:23, Tony Mechelynck <[email protected]> wrote: > On 01/01/10 13:14, Anthony Campbell wrote: >> >> Having recently rather unexpectedly found myself back on this list after >> being unable to get on it for several years, I seem to see a difference >> in emphasis. Most people who post here appear to be programmers, >> whereas previously there were other kinds of users as well. Nothing >> wrong with that, of course, and I'm not trying to start a flame war. But >> I'm not a programmer yet I use vim for all my writing and I'm wondering >> if I'm unusual. >> >> I write books among other things, and for that I first compose the text >> in vim, which allows me to concentrate on the meaning withoug bothering >> about the appearance, and then transfer it to LyX for final formatting. >> I find it useful to have these two different phases in writing. What I >> like about vim is the possibility to make quick transpositions of blocks >> of text and other changes. I usually end up with several files >> containing different versions of what I've written. >> >> Searching the web for people's views on writing methods I found a number >> who said that one should use vim for programming but emacs for other >> kinds of writing. So I had a look at emacs out of curiosity but couldn't >> see any real advantage for me in learning it. Am I missing something >> here? Is anyone else still using vim for writing lengthy texts? >> >> >> Anthony >> > > As was amply demonstrated by the replies already given to this post, Vim is > not limited to programmers, or even to programming tasks. I believe that Vim > can be used for any text-editing task, but maybe not by everyone: I believe > that an essential quality to become a proficient Vim user is willingness to > learn, and to continue learning as time goes on. Vim has excellent help, > second to none IMHO, but the sheer volume of that help may scare some people > away. Obviously, that help is not meant to be read all at one sitting, any > more than the Encyclopaedia Britannica is. With Vim, I think that the most > important thing to learn (after having run the Vim tutor, or as part of it) > is how to find one's way around in the help -- "learning how to learn", so > to speak. The second-most important is to learn about these mutual-help > groups here, where (to elaborate on Chris Jones's metaphor) freshly entered > apprentices, passed fellows of the craft, and long-time masters can all help > one another get better at the art -- and in many (but not all) cases the > solution to a particular question will be found by programming Vim in a > certain way, so that "programmers" may be disproportionately "noticeable" > among the people who answer the questions -- after all, writing a vimrc or > an after-plugin can be seen as a "programming" task, in a language which is > neither Algol nor C but is more or less related to both, and is also quite > "obvious" to understand for someone who knows how to use Vim. But the fact > that "programmers" are more visible doesn't mean that they are an > overwhelming majority; it means even less that programming tasks are > majoritarily what Vim is used for. Myself, I'm a retired programmer (my > first job as a college dropout was on a 131k [today one would say 128 Ki] > 6-bit-character, 667 kHz mainframe) and a retired teacher (I'm not wicked > enough for that wonderful profession); nowadays I do some web authoring, not > as a job but on my own site http://users.skynet.be/antoine.mechelynck/ (all > done with Vim, including some quite lengthy texts) but I do practically no > programming and no teaching, except maybe when I come here and try to teach > people how to program Vim. Even this last phrase is too strong; rather, > let's say that here I exchange with my Vim brethren various tips and tricks > about how to put to best use the wonderful set of tools which Vim has to > offer -- and, let me repeat, for any text editing task whatsoever. > >
I am not a programmer, but I use VIM. I use it mainly because there is no word processor that supports VIM keybindings, as I hate the rodent. I use the Vimperator Firefox extension as well, which is in fact how I discovered VIM. -- Dotan Cohen http://bido.com http://what-is-what.com Please CC me if you want to be sure that I read your message. I do not read all list mail. -- You received this message from the "vim_use" maillist. Do not top-post! Type your reply below the text you are replying to. For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php
