“Learning to use Vi editor could be a real pain for most people as it has a relatively steep learning curve. But once the most common commands are mastered, one gets to enjoy the sheer power of this editor made available at ones finger tips. One project which has gained a lot of popularity in the Vim community is Cream. Cream consists of a collection of scripts and plug-ins which aims to make it much easier for a new user to cut his teeth in Vim and the user can easily use most of the features of Vim which has made it the popular editor it is by just navigating the menu.”
Unfortunately, you have to know vi to really appreciate it, but it is quite marvellous. Should really have saved it up for April 1, its a bit wasted this time of year. But there are some real gems. The part about unfolding and folding, for instance, and the hilarious remark about using the common keys for cut and paste.
Very nice. Some parts of the world are not noted for a sense of irony. It will be very funny to see how many people think this is actually a serious article.
Edit: One shudders to think by the way what fiendish prank the author may have devised for anyone who actually does apt-get cream….
Edited 2006-06-17 18:07
Hmm… it does look serious to me (in the sense that the author means it serious), and it looks like it would make gvim easier to use… not that I see any hope that it would ever be used by the average user
Actually it is not funny. It is a very serious article. And Cream is a real project (http://cream.sourceforge.net/) which I have used in the initial stages – That is till I was able to master the keys in Vim atleast. And plenty of efforts have been put into this project by a whole lot of people to make Vim as user friendly as possible to the average user (leave out the geeky ones for a change).
And indeed as the article rightly puts it, cutting and pasting is a very common task which is done multiple times and the Cream project has remapped the keys to Ctrl+X for cut, Ctrl+C for copy and Ctrl+V for paste – which I believe is what the author meant. For example, to paste a text into Vi from another application, say a web page you have to use the combination of keys – [Esc]”+p to paste from the common clip board. You can’t paste text by pressing just p . It works only if the text is copied into the Vim register which is different from the common clipboard of the OS.
Don’t deride a project just because you don’t like it.
Edited 2006-06-17 19:32
“For example, to paste a text into Vi from another application, say a web page you have to use the combination of keys – [Esc]”+p to paste from the common clip board. You can’t paste text by pressing just p .”
Ya learn something new every day. I always just used the X buffer highlight+middle click. I thought that was the proper way to do it since it works quite well.
“Ya learn something new every day. I always just used the X buffer highlight+middle click. I thought that was the proper way to do it since it works quite well.”
Can you elaborate on that. I tried that and it doesn’t work in KDE. Which window manager do you use?
“Can you elaborate on that. I tried that and it doesn’t work in KDE. Which window manager do you use?”
I’m using CDE at the moment on Solaris but I’ve also done it under KDE. Highlight the text and hit i in vim, then middle click to paste from the buffer. Again this may not be the proper way to do it, but I’ve been using the X buffer for copy/paste so long that it’s just habit by now.
Thanks for the tip. It works. Really nice!!
By the way, you can also use O, o or I instead of i. But is it a Vim feature or a window manager feature? I tried it in xterm and it works there too. So I guess it is a Window manager feature. Still, it is really good tip.
Edited 2006-06-17 20:04
“By the way, you can also use O, o or I instead of i. But is it a Vim feature or a window manager feature? I tried it in xterm and it works there too. So I guess it is a Window manager feature. Still, it is really good tip. ”
It’s actually a feature of Xorg/XFree86 so it’s not even window manager dependant. Nice since it works everywhere that has an X environment.
Shift + Ins usually works.
If it takes a lot of time to learn something, the learning curve is shallow, not steep.
No. The reason people say the curve is steep is because you have to learn a great deal before you can do anything useful and you have to learn it quickly. In Vi, for example, before you can do something as simple as typing up a basic text file, you have to understand the modes, and know several command keys (at least ‘i’ and ‘:wq’). Modern GUI text editors generally let you just jump in and start typing, so you can learn more slowly and get to work more quickly (thus a shallower learning curve — learn less over a longer period of time).
I guess it all depends which quantity is denoted on the y-axis…
Gvim is good enough.
agreed.
Emacs
When I was a grad student 15 years ago, I had to use vi as it was what my supervisor used. I never tried Emacs. Five years ago when I started using Linux at home I tried Vim and discovered it had all of the stuff that scared me off vi. I did find Emacs and I used it under X11 so I had all the useful menus for all the cool stuff.
Then one day I had a system crash and had to edit system config files in a console. I had never learned the Emacs keybindings as I had always worked in a GUI. I could just remember enough about vi to edit the files using vim. After that I got back in to Vim and started using it a lot more.
Well thats my little story, but what’s the lesson of this story. It is this, even with Gvim you have to understand at least some of the basics of vi editing – modes and stuff. I think that Cream could have the same effect as running Emacs in a GUI you never learn the basics and how to use vi in a console. Every nix user needs to know that.
Anyway I only discovered Cream a few days ago and I think it is great. I have installed it on both my Ubuntu box at home and my Win XP box at work and I am quite enjoying playing with it.
n/t
lesser beings shouldn’t
Vi’s not user friendly?
I don’t know, I’ve been using vi (nvi, actually) and Vim since early 1999, and I find it quite user friendly. It is my default editor in Linux, Unix (the *BSD’s mainly), Mac OS X and Windows. Yes, Windows. Life is just too short to learn a different editor for each platform I have to work in. By concentrating on Vim (and nvi, when Vim isn’t available), I have removed a lot of frustration.
For instance: work exclusively in Vim for about a month, then try to use your favorite GUI editor under Windows. See how many times you hist the Esc key, or “i” for insert, and “:wq” to save & exit. It would be funny if you didn’t have to go back and fix your mistakes!
I am probably more productive right now, using just Vim and nvi, then I ever was using any GUI editor. I can do everything with just a few keystrokes, and never have to take my hands off of the keyboard. Even marking and moving a large block of text is quick and easy in Vim.
My initial reason for learning vi was it was the only editor we had on our HP-9000 K-class system. I’ve found that no matter what, you can pretty much count on some version of vi will be available on any Unix-like system.
I have been using cream for a while, and with this lastest (0.36) version it became my editor of choice forever <3
Until then I was swapping between Cream and Bluefish…now I am loyal to Cream forever.