Simon Myers - Donhost

Power 'Vim' Usage: Tips & Tricks for Everyday Editing

Vim is a popular text editor among Linux users. At least it's popular in the sense that many people use it. Whether those people could all be described as fans of it is another matter entirely.

Text editing is important because so much of Linux is plain-text-based: nearly all configuration files are in some sort of text format, as well as shell scripts, web pages, program source and e-mail messages. So it's important to be familiar with a decent text editor, and having good command of a powerful and feature-filled editor can result in great gains in efficiency (and corresponding losses in frustration).

Vim is not the only good text editor around, and this talk makes no attempt to justify choosing Vim over any of the others; but for those that already count themselves among the Vim-using community (and perhaps also those who only consider themselves to be Vim-curious), it presents a gallimaufry of tips for doing more with less effort.

Topics covered will include: getting the hang of the various configuration files (including customizing different behaviour for different types of files); spelling-checking; XML editing; invokving Vim for Mozilla Firefox; CVS integration; performing regular transformations to files; and a bunch of smaller but handy tips.

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