Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

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VI and VIM (Was: questions for Doc)

Author:	Dino Morelli
Posted:	5/1/1999; 5:29:47 PM
Topic:	Linux' wide open spaces
Msg #:	5513 (In response to 5512)
Prev/Next:	5512 / 5514

Let me put it this way: I have been told that I had best deliver my editorial matter written in VI. And learning VI for a client-with-a-mouse guy like me is a major bitch; although I'm glad to do it.

Which really means that your documents need to be plain text. VI doesn't have a file format, it's all plain text a-la source code or readme.txt files or html. You could use any plain-text editor. You could use the fanciest, mousey one you can find for X. You could even use Notepad.exe running under Wine (yikes! Who would do that? hehe)

Funny that VI should come up anyway. I switched over to VIM (stands for Vi IMproved) for ALL of my text/code/html/whatever editing. The VI command style really clicked with me.

VIM is sweet. It's like a souped-up VI with a gui and mouse support. Has a toolbar too if you like that sort of thing. It's also been ported to like every platform that has a keyboard, basically.

And, amongst the coolest of the cool things, your .vimrc file works across platforms. If you share one machine with Windows and Linux, multiple copies of VIM can use the same settings (provided Linux can see the FAT volume, of course).

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