Vimcasts on vacation
I’m going to be taking a short break from Vimcasts to travel around India and Indonesia. I’ll be back in September, and a new season of Vimcasts will follow. If you’re eager to see more episodes, please show your support by leaving a tip - you can donate with paypal, or flattr me.
I will be available for contracting work from September. If you have any jobs involving ruby or javascript then . I’m happy to work remotely, or to travel if your part of the world appeals (to my wife).
Wish me good health!
Thanks,
Drew Neil
Updating your vimrc file on the fly
The vimrc file allows you to preserve your settings so that they are restored each time you launch Vim. But what if you want to update your vimrc file in the middle of an editing session? This episode demonstrates a couple of tricks that make it easy to customize Vim on the fly.
Vimcasts adopts Flattr for micropayments
A number of people have contacted me to say that they would love to leave a tip, but object to using PayPal - the only method I provided for making donations. I had never heard of Flattr until recently, but a few people have requested that I integrate it into Vimcasts.org. I’ve always liked the idea of micro payments, so I thought I would give it a shot.
Converting HAML to ERB with Vim macros
HAML and ERB are two commonly used ruby templating languages. You may have a strong preference for one or the other, but it’s not always up to you which one you use. I was recently asked to convert several HAML files to ERB format. In this episode, I will demonstrate a couple of Vim macros that helped make short work of the task.
Vimcasts now available on Boxee
Boxee allows you to watch movies, TV shows and clips from the Internet on your TV. Ever since Vimcasts launched, people have been saying ”get it added to boxee”. Thanks to Clayton Parker I am happy to announce that there is now a Vimcasts app for Boxee.
Selecting columns with visual block mode
If you want to edit several adjacent lines with a similar format, you might save a lot of time by making a columnar selection. This episode will demonstrate how to achieve this using Vim’s visual block mode.
Converting markdown to structured HTML with a macro
Recording your keystrokes as a macro can be a great timesaver, but you have to be careful that you use commands in such a way that they can be reused. In this episode, I construct a fairly complex macro to build a structural HTML document from markdown.
Running Vim within IRB
If you work with ruby you will know that the interactive ruby shell, or ‘IRB’ for short, is a useful sketchpad for coding. But the command line interface of IRB can feel quite limiting in comparison with the power of your text editor. In this episode, I’m going to demonstrate how you can get the best of both worlds, by loading Vim from inside IRB.
Spell checking
Using a spell checker is a good habit to get into. In this episode, I demonstrate how to use Vim’s built in spell checking feature.
Formatting text with par
‘Do one thing and do it well’ is the principle of the Unix toolkit. Editing text is a broad domain, and there are many related tasks with which it overlaps. Vim acknowledges this by enabling certain tasks to be outsourced to external programs which do that one thing, and do it well. This episode will demonstrate how the par program can be used for formatting text.
