I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…

Look for some sample .vimrc’s on the web if you have time. You’ll find many definitions and macros that save a lot of time and trouble. You can reuse the ones that you think are useful to you instead of reinventing them.

The truth is that there is a structure to the VI command set. I have linked my name (above) to the list of cheat sheets that I make available to my students (and the rest of the ‘net, of course!). Please forgive the rather hokey layout; I’ll change that one of these days… In the meantime, if you scroll down towards the bottom you’ll find a link to the VI cheat sheet. In summary, the cheat sheet shows that you can take “one from column A and one from column B” to create most VI commands. There are a few exceptions and the common ones are right smack in the middle of the first page of the cheat sheet.

Hope that helps.

Most useful advanced vim features for me are:

– word completion (^P/^N in insert mode)
– window splits (^W s, ^W v)
– jumping to class/function definitions (^] after building a tags file with :!ctags -R .)
– jumping to filename under cursor (gf)
– interactive diffs (vimdiff file1 file2)

I also quite like the high-level editing commands (e.g. “change the contents of the current HTML element to something else” -> citsomething else).

Ive assembled a reference card that maps ideas to cryptic commands, not the other way round as you’ll find many more. Find mine here: http://simpletutorials.com/html/vim/vimquick.pdf. If you fill out a lot of web forms, try out the “It’s all text” plugin for firefox. (also works for emacs, but i guess it’s slower )

The link to the vim tips is here: http://vim.wikia.com

Two more tips:
* learn the concepts of vim, not stupid commands like “ZZ” or “wq”. The “modes” and extensibility is what makes vim special.
* Search for the “7 habits of text editing” of bram. quite useful, and mainly independent of the editor …

I think thats all. Vim rocks!

Sebastian.

Also search the archive of vim@vim.org on mail-archive.org. Subscribe to vim-experiment@googlegroups.com . There is a very friendly and helpful community even for newbies. vimtutor has been mentioned. Learn to use the :help. Take your time. You need at least a year to get comfortable with vim. Rumours say that you own the editor if you know what typing your name would do in vim. There are a lot of cool scripts that are not enabled by default search them in the vim runtime. shit batteries empty. …