> Having recently rather unexpectedly found myself back on this list after
> being unable to get on it for several years, I seem to see a difference
> in emphasis. Most people who post here appear to be programmers,
> whereas previously there were other kinds of users as well. Nothing
> wrong with that, of course, and I'm not trying to start a flame war. But
> I'm not a programmer yet I use vim for all my writing and I'm wondering
> if I'm unusual.
>
> I write books among other things, and for that I first compose the text
> in vim, which allows me to concentrate on the meaning withoug bothering
> about the appearance, and then transfer it to LyX for final formatting.
> I find it useful to have these two different phases in writing. What I
> like about vim is the possibility to make quick transpositions of blocks
> of text and other changes. I usually end up with several files
> containing different versions of what I've written.
>
> Searching the web for people's views on writing methods I found a number
> who said that one should use vim for programming but emacs for other
> kinds of writing. So I had a look at emacs out of curiosity but couldn't
> see any real advantage for me in learning it. Am I missing something
> here? Is anyone else still using vim for writing lengthy texts?
>
>
> Anthony
>
As was amply demonstrated by the replies already given to this post, Vim
is not limited to programmers, or even to programming tasks. I believe
that Vim can be used for any text-editing task, but maybe not by
everyone: I believe that an essential quality to become a proficient Vim
user is willingness to learn, and to continue learning as time goes on.
Vim has excellent help, second to none IMHO, but the sheer volume of
that help may scare some people away. Obviously, that help is not meant
to be read all at one sitting, any more than the Encyclopaedia
Britannica is. With Vim, I think that the most important thing to learn
(after having run the Vim tutor, or as part of it) is how to find one's
way around in the help -- "learning how to learn", so to speak. The
second-most important is to learn about these mutual-help groups here,
where (to elaborate on Chris Jones's metaphor) freshly entered
apprentices, passed fellows of the craft, and long-time masters can all
help one another get better at the art -- and in many (but not all)
cases the solution to a particular question will be found by programming
Vim in a certain way, so that "programmers" may be disproportionately
"noticeable" among the people who answer the questions -- after all,
writing a vimrc or an after-plugin can be seen as a "programming" task,
in a language which is neither Algol nor C but is more or less related
to both, and is also quite "obvious" to understand for someone who knows
how to use Vim. But the fact that "programmers" are more visible doesn't
mean that they are an overwhelming majority; it means even less that
programming tasks are majoritarily what Vim is used for. Myself, I'm a
retired programmer (my first job as a college dropout was on a 131k
[today one would say 128 Ki] 6-bit-character, 667 kHz mainframe) and a
retired teacher (I'm not wicked enough for that wonderful profession);
nowadays I do some web authoring, not as a job but on my own site
http://users.skynet.be/antoine.mechelynck/ (all done with Vim, including
some quite lengthy texts) but I do practically no programming and no
teaching, except maybe when I come here and try to teach people how to
program Vim. Even this last phrase is too strong; rather, let's say that
here I exchange with my Vim brethren various tips and tricks about how
to put to best use the wonderful set of tools which Vim has to offer --
and, let me repeat, for any text editing task whatsoever.
Best regards,
Tony.
--
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest
in students.
-- John Ciardi
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