> On 01/01/10 13:14, Anthony Campbell wrote:
>>
>> 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.
>
>
I am not a programmer, but I use VIM. I use it mainly because there is
no word processor that supports VIM keybindings, as I hate the rodent.
I use the Vimperator Firefox extension as well, which is in fact how I
discovered VIM.
--
Dotan Cohen
http://bido.com
http://what-is-what.com
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