[CLUE-Tech] Reliable writing editors?

David Anselmi anselmi at americanisp.net
Mon Feb 3 08:40:08 MST 2003


Jeffery Cann wrote:
> My biggest problem is code versus text editing.  I tend to hit <ESC> key too 
> frequently and I think it must be a bad habit.  I tried using VIM without 
> leaving insert mode and using the mouse to move around and it's much easier 
> on keystrokes.  Code-editing movement is better (IMHO) without the mouse and 
> this is why I use VIM for everything related to code.

Why do you want to use the mouse to move around prose?  There are plenty 
of commands to move around without, even in prose.  Sorry I'm not much 
help with habits.

> 
> My other issue with VIM is that I cannot seem to get word wrapping to work.  
[...]

As mentioned, textwidth is what you want to set.  Then vim does the line 
breaks as you type, where they belong.  Rewriting can be cumbersome on a 
paragraph that already has line breaks, but gq will rewrap it (use in 
combination with the appropriate movement commands, e.g., {gq} will move 
you to the beginning of a paragraph and rewrap until the end of the 
parargraph).

Part of the problem is that we have so many editing widget interfaces 
that the time you spend learning one well doesn't get you anywhere with 
any of the others.  vi (and emacs) seem to be relatively widespread 
thanks to readline but even in MS Office each app has its own 
ideosyncrasies (and some of them have changed between 2k and XP, ugh!)

Anyone know how to make Mozilla's compose window behave like vi?

Dave




More information about the clue-tech mailing list