Or you could just run 'vimtutor'

Story: Learn how to use the vi editorTotal Replies: 8
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BernardSwiss

Jan 13, 2016
9:58 PM EDT
I don't know why this article didn't even mention vimtutor -- it generally comes packaged along with the Vim editor.

I think it might even be part of vim-common. (Nope; just checked -- and it's actually part of vim-runtime ! So if you have Vim installed, you should already have vimtutor, already built in.) Just type 'vimtutor' into a terminal.

If I recall correctly, it's fairly comprehensive, and takes only about a half an hour to run through it.

After that, you'll have some idea what's actually available in the basic, default functionality (eg.inserting a column!), plus you'll know what you should actually be looking for, in any "cheat-sheet" or other documentation you might care to keep handy.
dotmatrix

Jan 13, 2016
10:28 PM EDT
I use vi all the time. I'm terrible at it... I love it and I hate it.

I've found that I really only need to know a few keystrokes to be 'proficient' enough to get work done. I've printed out probably a hundred different "cheat-sheets" for vi -- I never seem to be able to find a sheet when I need a sheet.. aww sheet! ... I typically just use the arrows on the keyboard and 'a' or 'i' wherever I need, a little 'x' and 'dd', and then some :w and :q or :q! if horrible mistakes have happened.

I know, I know. vi is the most awesome thing in the world, except for maybe emacs -- but I can only keep so many things in my miniscule mass of neurons.
notbob

Jan 14, 2016
7:10 PM EDT
vi is the root of all evil. --nb

There, I sed it and I stand by it! ;)
JaseP

Jan 14, 2016
7:40 PM EDT
... vi,... vim,... pffft!

... nano !!!
jdixon

Jan 14, 2016
8:16 PM EDT
You all do know that you're doomed to burn in hell for blaspheming the gospel of text editing as passed down to us by the great Saint Bill Joy, don't you?

Yes, some people prefer the gospel according to St. Stallman, but there are heretics in any religion.
CFWhitman

Jan 15, 2016
12:00 PM EDT
I'm going to be a radical and mention jupp as a good command line text editor. You might feel like it falls somewhere between nano and emacs in its general philosophy. One thing I like about it is that you can always bring up shortcut key help with Ctrl-J (and it tells you that at the bottom of the screen), in case you haven't used it regularly enough to remember all the shortcut keys. Of course, if I really used command line editing a lot, I might just go for emacs. I'm not really crazy about modal editors like vim/elvis. Perhaps if I used them enough, I'd get used to it and wouldn't mind.
jdixon

Jan 15, 2016
1:48 PM EDT
> I'm going to be a radical and mention jupp as a good command line text editor.

Since jupp seems to be a fork of joe, which used the wordstar command set, I can't really argue with that.
vainrveenr

Jan 15, 2016
5:15 PM EDT
Quoting:You might feel like it falls somewhere between nano and emacs in its general philosophy. One thing I like about it is that you can always bring up shortcut key help with Ctrl-J (and it tells you that at the bottom of the screen), in case you haven't used it regularly enough to remember all the shortcut keys. Of course, if I really used command line editing a lot, I might just go for emacs.


Quoting:jupp seems to be a fork of joe, which used the wordstar command set,


Yet as a reminder, from the Joe's Own Editor project found at http://joe-editor.sourceforge.net/:
Quoting:JOE is a blending of MicroPro's venerable microcomputer word processor WordStar and Richard Stallman's famous LISP based text editor GNU-EMACS (but it does not use code from either program): most of the basic editing keys are the same as in WordStar as is the overall feel of the editor. JOE also has some of the key bindings and many of the powerful features of EMACS.




CFWhitman

Jan 15, 2016
5:19 PM EDT
Yes, I used to use joe, but jupp is still in active development while joe seems not to be. Of course, not a lot changes with a text editor like that, and joe is still good, but there are a couple of fixes that never made it into joe. Also, there is a "joe" mode available for jupp that makes everything work exactly like it did in a certain version of joe (I think before some bugs got introduced). You can install it by installing the package "joe-jupp" on Debian based systems at least, but of course it conflicts with the package "joe," since the binary is evoked with the same name.

Edit: I just looked at the joe home page and it seems like there have been some updates recently. I could swear that the last time I looked nothing new had been released for years (it seems like since 2006), and there were known bugs in the last release.

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