Friday, January 1, 2010

Is vim just for programmers?

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

--
Anthony Campbell - ac@acampbell.org.uk
Microsoft-free zone - Using Debian GNU/Linux
http://www.acampbell.org.uk - sample my ebooks at
http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/acampbell

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