Slonlt's List: Vim and other IDE

• Open your terminal and type

  vimtutor
• http://vimcasts.org/
• "slowly and steadily"
• Use Vim as your primary text editor, practice everyday.
• Modify vimrc options, scripts to make Vim fit your work.

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• zz, zt, zb - position cursor at middle, top, or bottom of screen
• really wish I'd known that you can use Ctrl-C instead of ESC to switch out of insert mode
• remapped my Caps-Lock to an Esc.

• • Don't press escape ever. Look at the vi wikipedia page. As mentioned above, ctrl-c is a better alternative. I strongly suggest mapping your caps lock key to escape.

   
• If you're editing a ctags compatible language, using a tags file and :ta, ctrl-], etc is a great way to navigate the code, even across multiple files. Also, ctrl-n and ctrl-p completion using the tags file is a great way to cut down on keystrokes.

• • If you're editing a line that is wrapped because it's wider than your buffer, you can move up/down using gk and gj.

   

  • Try to focus on effective use of the motion commands before you learn bad habits. Things like using 'dt' or 'd3w' instead of pressing x a bunch of times. Basically any time that you find yourself presing the same key repeatedly, there's probably a better/faster/more concise way of accomplishing the same thing.
• ZZ (works like :wq)

• ^O and ^I

    

  Go to previous (^O - "O" for old) location or to the next (^I - "I" just near to "O"). When you perform searches, edit files etc., you can navigate through these "jumps" forward and back.
• gi switches to insertion mode placing the cursor at the same location it was previously.
• Use A instead of I to have the text inserted after the block on every line.
• :shell to launch a shell console from Vim. Useful when for example you want to test a script without quitting Vim. Simply hit ^d when you done with the shell console, and then you come back to Vim and your edited file.
• Typing a line number followed by gg will take you to that line.
• : followed by line number does the same :42 goes to line number 42
• Typing a line number followed by G has the same effect.
• ^r^w to paste the word under cursor in the command mode. Really useful when using grep or replace commands
• • ^wi: Jump to the tag under the cursor by splitting the window.
   
  • cib/ciB: Change the text inside the current set of parenthesis () or braces {}, respectively.
   
  • :set listchars=tab:>-,trail:_ list : Show tabs/trailing spaces visually different from other spaces. Helps a lot with Python coding.
• Press % when the cursor is on a quote, paren, bracket, or brace to find its match.

• My favorite is ct; or ct) which deletes everything up to the trailing semicolon / closing parentheses and then places you in insert mode.

    

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• Most important

    

  Get a copy of rails.vim it is awesome on millions of levels. Read the doc. There are way too many tips, :Rview customer, :RSmodel foo, :Rinvert, gf, :Rextract, :Rake and the list goes on and on. You will probably want NERDTree as well for easy navigation (which you can access using :Rtree)

    

  Second most important

    

  Follow tpope on twitter (the author of fugative, rails.vim, haml.vim, vividchalk theme, cucumber.vim and so on), he seems to be posting new related to Rails vim plugins quite regularly (be it syntax highlighting or git integration).

• Here are some things I do daily with Vim when doing Ruby on Rails development:

    
   
  • Quickly run a test from within the editor using the Rubytest.vim plugin.
   
  • Jump to the implementation of a method or class with Exuberant Ctags.
   
  • Automatically complete a method or variable name I am typing with Vim's keyword completion.
   
  • Automatically complete a common Rails function with the rails.vim plugin.
   
  • Search throughout a project with ack and the ack.vim plugin.
   
  • Browse through projects with a files and folders view using the NERD Tree plugin.
   
  • Quickly open a specific file using the rails.vim plugin commands or using the FuzzyFinder plugin.
   
  • Search through a list of variable and method names with FuzzyFinder.

• Nerdtree
• Tim Pope has some kickass plugins. I love his surround plugin.

• Taglist, a source code browser plugin for Vim, is currently the top rated plugin at the Vim website and is my favorite plugin.

   
• I really like the SuperTab plugin, it allows you to use the tab key to do all your insert completions.
• I love snipMate. It's simular to snippetsEmu, but has a much better syntax to read (like Textmate).
• • Elegant (mini) buffer explorer - This is the multiple file/buffer manager I use. Takes very little screen space. It looks just like most IDEs where you have a top tab-bar with the files you've opened. I've tested some other similar plugins before, and this is my pick.
   
  • TagList - Small file explorer, without the "extra" stuff the other file explorers have. Just lets you browse directories and open files with the "enter" key. Note that this has already been noted by previous commenters to your questions.
   
  • SuperTab - Already noted by WMR in this post, looks very promising. It's an auto-completion replacement key for Ctrl-P.
   
  • Desert256 color Scheme - Readable, dark one.
   
  • Moria color scheme - Another good, dark one. Note that it's gVim only.
   
  • Enahcned Python syntax - If you're using Python, this is an enhanced syntax version. Works better than the original. I'm not sure, but this might be already included in the newest version. Nonetheless, it's worth adding to your syntax folder if you need it.
   

  • Enhanced JavaScript syntax - Same like the above.

   

  • EDIT: Comments - Great little plugin to [un]comment chunks of text. Language recognition included ("#", "/", "/* .. */", etc.) .
• vimoutliner

• Txtfmt (The Vim Highlighter) Screenshots

    

  The Txtfmt plugin gives you a sort of "rich text" highlighting capability, similar to what is provided by RTF editors and word processors. You can use it to add colors (foreground and background) and formatting attributes (all combinations of bold, underline, italic, etc...) to your plain text documents in Vim.

    

  The advantage of this plugin over something like Latex is that with Txtfmt, your highlighting changes are visible "in real time", and as with a word processor, the highlighting is WYSIWYG. Txtfmt embeds special tokens directly in the file to accomplish the highlighting, so the highlighting is unaffected when you move the file around, even from one computer to another. The special tokens are hidden by the syntax; each appears as a single space. For those who have applied Vince Negri's conceal/ownsyntax patch, the tokens can even be made "zero-width".
• Gist plugin - Github Gists (Kind of Githubs answer to Pastebin, integrated with Git for awesomeness!)

• TaskList

    

  This script is based on the eclipse Task List. It will search the file for FIXME, TODO, and XXX (or a custom list) and put them in a handy list for you to browse which at the same time will update the location in the document so you can see exactly where the tag is located. Something like an interactive 'cw'

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• cw

    

  Change word - deletes the word under the cursor and puts you in insert mode to type a new one. Of course this works with other movement keys, so you can do things like c$ to change to the end of the line.

    

  f + character

    

  Finds the next occurrence of the character on the current line. So you can do vft to select all the text up to the next "t" on the current line. It's another movement key, so it works with other commands too.
• I'm surprised no-one's mentioned Vim's windowing support. CTRL-W s is something I use nearly every time I open vim.

• :x #(Save and Quit a File) 

    

  Same as :wq or ZZ

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• Load your code/document, and make sure the filetype is what you what. (use :set to see what filetype is set to).
  
  Turn indent on, and then do "gg=G".
  
  For example, to autoformat a xml file.
  
  1) :set filetype=xml
  2) :filetype indent on
  3) gg=G