On 07/04/11 22:15, Eric Weir wrote:
I've downloaded and installed a copy of MacVim. I've peeked at a few of the help topics.
[I'd like to run the tutorial, but haven't figured out how to do that, yet.] I'm not a
programmer. Far from it. I'm intrigued for a least a couple reasons, the main one being
the fact that Vim is command-driven, that everything's done from the keyboard. [My very
first experience with an "editor" was with Wordstar on CPM, and I've missed
doing everything from the keyboard ever since.] The outliner plugins appeal to me as
well. [I was a long-time devote of MaxThink, running it in a DOS Window after moving to
Windows from DOS, and in DOSBox under Linux and now on a Mac.] And so does the
possibility of using it as a file manager as well as editor.
Still, as I imagine many are, I'm a bit intimidated complexity of the commands
and the steep learning curve. So, I'm wondering if there are any ordinary,
nonprogrammer writers here who've gotten comfortable with Vim as a writer's
editor -- or is that just ridiculous to think of?
Thanks,
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric Weir
Decatur, GA USA
eew...@bellsouth.net
Oh, it is not at all ridiculous to think of, the idea is just to take it
slowly, bit by bit, and not think that next week you will already know
everything about Vim from A to Zed, Alpha to Omega and Aleph to Tav.
How to use the vimtutor is explained in the first few lines of
vimtutor.bat (for Windows) or of vimtutor (for Unix - Linux - Mac OS X -
etc.) It is slightly different for Windows and for other OSes. Run that
tutor as soon as you can, it will teach you the basics.
You're now subscribed to the vim_use, that's another good point. Read
what is said here, and while at first some posts may pass you completely
over the head, others will teach you useful tips and tricks about how to
get the most out of Vim.
And finally, don't hesitate to use the help. When, in one of the posts
in this mailing list, you come across a command, an option, etc., which
is obscure to you, go find its help. The Vim help is infinitely better
than what most other programs try to pass off as "help" and often is
hardly more than an advertising pamphlet by comparison: with Vim,
*everything* is covered in the help. So much so that the newbie
sometimes faces a sort of needle-and-haystack problem; however, even
against that problem there is help -- when I started using Vim it was in
several places, but now most of the "help about help" has been brought
together in one place, namely the helpfile helphelp.txt. So by typing
:help helphelp.txt
in a running Vim, you will be brought to "help about using help", which
IMO is the most important thing to master in order to become a
proficient Vim user.
Best regards,
Tony.
--
What the hell, go ahead and put all your eggs in one basket.
--
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
