dorkitude-Vim

About

I'm @dorkitude, and this is my vim repo.

After becoming as fast as possible with a combination of TextMate and Visor, I decided I needed more speed. A paradigm shift was in order. On April 9th, 2011, I switched to vim.

This repository is here to help people make a similar transition. There will be trial and error with key bindings, and with adding/removing extensions, but HEAD on master will serve as the current best practice (as defined by my own daily usage). That branch's commit history, meanwhile, will serve as the living documentation of my journey into vim.

UPDATE: On April 30th, 20011, I realized I had now become faster for most tasks than I ever was with TextMate/visor. And it's accelerating!

Getting Started

If you're new to vim, you should really watch all of Derek Wyatt's quirky/awesome tutorial videos here.

If you use git (and presumably you do, since this is a github README file), the vim plugin Fugitive (included in this repo as a submodule) is a must-have! Watch these vimcasts to see why.

Installation

1. checkout the repo (the --recursive will force it to also checkout the submodules):

      git clone --recursive git://github.com/dorkitude/dorkitude-Vim.git
   

2. go to your home directory:

      cd ~
   

3. create symlink called .vimrc and point it to dorkitude-Vim/.vimrc:

      ln -s /path/to/dorkitude-Vim/.vimrc .vimrc
   

4. create symlink called .vim and point it to the folder dorkitude-Vim/.vim/:

      ln -s /path/to/dorkitude-Vim/.vim/ .vim
   

5. Follow the installation instructions for Command-T. IMHO Command-T is absolutely essential to using vim for a project, and it requires you to have a version of vim compiled with Ruby support. Don't skip this!

Usage

Leaving insert mode

I stole Steve Losh's [Quicker Escaping] shortcut. If you type jj while in insert mode, vim will exit to normal mode. [Quicker Escaping]: http://stevelosh.com/blog/2010/09/coming-home-to-vim/#quicker-escaping

using git via the Fugitive plugin

While I've used git via the command line for years, I now rarely leave Vim to perform git commands. To learn how, watch this and this.

Window Movement

My window motion bindings allow you to do this to move control windows:

• CTRL+h move control to the window to the left
• CTRL+j = move control to the window below
• CTRL+k = move control to the window above
• CTRL+l = move control to the window to the right

(Normally, these would be ^w h ^w j etc)

Vim Surround

This thing is amazing! It adds a new kind of target called a "surrounding", which means 'the area surrounding the current word'. Read some usage examples here. here.: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1697

Ack

Ack is the best way to search your codebase for a given pattern.

With my settings, you can just hit ,a and begin typing a pattern. Press enter to perform the search. The results will show up in a vim quickfix window, which gives you shortcuts to the file and line of each search result (move your cursor to the desired result and press enter to jump to that file/line).

The NERDtree project drawer

I have this mapped to F2. On my Mac, that means I press fn + F2, since F2 alone will actually change my brightness.

Command-T

You can activate Command-T with \t

The following mappings are active when the prompt has focus: note on mac laptops fn + <backspace> is equivalent to <delete>

<BS>        delete the character to the left of the cursor
<Del>       delete the character at the cursor
<Left>      move the cursor one character to the left
<C-h>       move the cursor one character to the left
<Right>     move the cursor one character to the right
<C-l>       move the cursor one character to the right
<C-a>       move the cursor to the start (left)
<C-e>       move the cursor to the end (right)
<C-u>       clear the contents of the prompt
<Tab>       change focus to the file listing

The following mappings are active when the file listing has focus:

<Tab>       change focus to the prompt

The following mappings are active when either the prompt or the file listing has focus:

<CR>        open the selected file
<C-CR>      open the selected file in a new split window
<C-s>       open the selected file in a new split window
<C-v>       open the selected file in a new vertical split window
<C-t>       open the selected file in a new tab
<C-j>       select next file in the file listing
<C-n>       select next file in the file listing
<Down>      select next file in the file listing
<C-k>       select previous file in the file listing
<C-p>       select previous file in the file listing
<Up>        select previous file in the file listing
<C-c>       cancel (dismisses file listing)

The following is also available on terminals which support it:

<Esc>       cancel (dismisses file listing)

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Red Tape

Here's some crap I have to put in here to keep people from suing me.

dorkitude-Vim License

dorkitude-Vim is released under the wtfpl.

See http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl

Basically: Do whatever you want with my stuff, just don't sue me. I make no warrantees about its use, blah blah blah, just live free and go create stuff!

Command-T License

You can find the Command-T License in the source for that extension. I believe it's in .vim/bundle/command-t