On Apr 10, 2011, at 8:55 PM, AK wrote: > The way I think about this is.. it does have quite a learning curve and > even though others will disagree, my feeling is that the documentation > and help system are very, very far from ideal for a new user (although > both are near perfect as a reference for dyed-in-the-wool user); > however, it all makes sense if you intend to do a lot of text editing > over the next 20+ years. Programming is becoming more available to > non-programmers and that's something to keep in mind if not for tomorrow > then for the day after tomorrow (possibility of catastrophic climate > change notwithstanding).
Thanks. Yes, I can see that the documentation -- help, manual, how-tos -- are excellent. But I agree with you that even with it its still pretty baffling for a new user, especially a nonprogrammer. In spite of all the helpful suggestions in response to my responses here, all my reading on various vim-related websites, and my scanning of the Oalline book, it wasn't until yesterday that I figured out how to open the manual pages. And even then it came as a result of a guess at something that might work. But, I don't want to get into complaining. Clearly, Vim is an outstanding editor and the documentation is outstanding as well. It's just that all that power carries with it a good measure of complexity. It takes time. Unfortunately, I'm not in a position to drop all my current applications and go at Vim whole-hog and exclusively. I wish it were so. Two applications are especially hard to imagine leaving behind, even temporarily: [1] An editor/documents manager developed for writers, especially writers working on large projects, called Scrivener. [2] Apple Mail. None of the email clients I've experienced can hold a candle to Eudora as far as I'm concerned, but I am otherwise very satisfied with Mail. [There is one problem, one that's serious enough to make me wonder about other possibilities: Frequent intermittent hang-ups in sending mail. Fiddling with the outgoing server settings in random ways, combined with shutting Mail down and restarting it and rebooting the system, eventually gets it going. But there really is no way telling what will work. A particular setting will stop working. I find another that works, then it stops. I go back to the first one, and the mail starts going out. Very frustrating. And judging from the Apple forums, I'm not alone in experiencing this problem. Mutt is mentioned frequently here. I went looking for it, but apparently it's not available for Macs.] > I also want to add that if I were using vim mainly for writing text, > there's one plugin I would find particularly enticing: AutoCompletePopup > (you can search for it on google or vim.org). It completes the words for > you automatically as you type, and shows you a menu where you can use > ctrl-n/p shorcuts to select the match. Some may find it annoying but > once I got used to it I feel like it does 30% of the work for me and it > doesn't require remembering any vim commands, so I think it's a really > useful and "sexy" plugin for new users especially. I'll keep it in mind, though I should say that I found autocompletion on OpenOffice really irritating. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Eric Weir Decatur, GA USA [email protected] -- 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
