VimCasts.org

Today I’m rolling out some major enhancements to the Vimcasts.org website. I’ve been working on this project with Hannah Adcock since January. If you’re reading this via RSS, why not click through to the new homepage and check it out?

I’ve sometimes wondered what could lure me to switch from Vim to another text editor. On the whole I’m happy with Vim, but the one thing that bothers me is the cruft that has accumulated over the course of 20+ years. Imagine Vim, but without the nocompatible option. That is the promise of Neovim.

In the not-too-distant future, you can expect to see a revised design for Vimcasts.org. The most significant enhancements will be the addition of tags, site search, and a responsive design for smaller screens. Hannah Adcock, from contentedstrategy.com, has been helping me out by analysing user feedback, as well as data from Google Analytics.

Choosing a key-map for your custom Vim commands can be difficult. The common advice is to use <leader> for user-defined mappings, but that’s not the only option. There are dozens of two-key mappings that are not bound to any built-in functionality. These available mappings are easy to find if you follow a simple formula.

Vimcasts was launched four years ago, in January 2010. I anticipated making only a dozen screencasts, but there are now over 50, as well as a blog. I’m going to make some changes so you can find what you’re looking for more easily. I’d appreciate your help! Please fill out this survey and I’ll take your feedback on board.

To the newcomer, Vim’s way of doing things may seem strange, but with familiarity it becomes natural. Many of Vim’s features seemed odd to me at first, but when I got used to them I recognised that they had their own particular elegance. However, there’s one feature of Vim that still feels awkward to me: using registers for copy and paste. The deeper my understanding of registers becomes, the more they frustrate me!

Episodes 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 58, and 59 are all on the topic of copy and paste in Vim. I think that this is one area where Vim is especially confusing, partly because of Vim’s non-standard jargon for cut, copy and paste operations. It’s not the most intuitive copy/paste system, but it’s usable when you get the hang of certain concepts and techniques.

Many systems ship with a version of Vim that was compiled with the -clipboard feature disabled, which is a damned nuisance! Being able to access the system clipboard from Vim is an essential feature. Let’s look at a few ways of getting the +clipboard feature on OS X and Ubuntu.

Gittip is a way to give weekly cash gifts to people whose work inspires you. If you’d like to support the people who help make Vim awesome, why not sign up and join the Vim community? (We need 13 more members to hit the 150 threshold.) I’ve set up a weekly gift for Tim Pope, whose Vim plugins I use every day.

I’d like to thank everyone who responded to my recent survey about supporting Vimcasts via a subscription model. I’ve taken your feedback on board and have decided to keep producing free Vimcasts. I can cover this site’s running costs and support myself by teaching Vim classes and producing longer video tutorials to sell.