Sunday, 24 April 2011

Gvim: best editor for linux workstations

I'm a big fan of TextMate text editor on Mac machine and on window i prefer Notepad to every other ide including eclipse. But nowadays i'm on linux and so i couldn't use textmate anymore and same goes for notepad++. I tried running it via wine, but most of its function didn't works well.
I google and found vim is one of the best editor for linux workstations. After trying a while, i found vim easy to use and rich in features.

First thing first, get yourself a copy of vim editor.  Vim comes in two variant : command line and Gui. I prefer Gui over command line one, reason being easier to edit and maintain while working on large project.


If you're on ubuntu , go to your synaptic manager , search and install GVIM.
Once done installing, here're some commands, that might come handy for you.

How to get help in GVimp
:help
ctrl + T  # to move back on help menu pages

Saving and Quiting
:q # quit
:w # save
:wq # save and then quit

Some copying and pasting commannds:
y  # copy entire line
p # paste copied stuff

Selection commands
v # select character by character
V # select line by line
ctrl+v # select letter by letter multilines together

deletion commands
dd # delete current line
dw # delete word

Editing commands
ctrl+N # autocomplete
:line no # to move to specific line  number
:x   # shortcut to  save and close :wq

Window/tab Management Commands
:tabe file.txt  #open new tab with file 'file.txt'. If file doesn't exist , it'll create a new one
:tabc # close the current tab
:tabn 1 # to move to tab 1

:sp # split window horizontally
:vsplit # split window vertically
ctrl + w # to toggle focus among splitted windows

To run shell command
:!command  # eg.  :! ls

Here 's cool cheat sheet of  vim text editor.
Go, and have a taste of vim/Gvim.


Installings plugins and themes in Vim/Gvim
To install any extension in vim, you just need to drop  it inside /home/user/.vim/  folder.
For example:Installing Color Scheme In Gvim/Vim
To install this beautiful theme just download it and put it insde   /home/user/.vim/colors  folders.
Just  browse the various the themes out there for gim and choose the best one suited for your project.

Online Resources:
color schemes test
Download Gvim color schemes
vim for web development

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