UltraNurdage

A (Very Brief) Vim Experiment

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I decided on a whim to start poking at Vim, based on Dan’s repeated and strong recommendations that I try it out. Of course I know full well that he wants me to switch away from Emacs, and I don’t mind humoring him.

However, after a very brief poking session, playing with the beginning of the tutorial, and mucking around in my .vimrc, I discovered something on the OS X Vim website: Vim does not allow for multiple top-level windows.

Dan reacted as if I were speaking a foreign language, but I am most definitely a GUI user. I use my mouse for things like selection and file navigation. I like the Application -> Window hierarchical paradigm on OS X. I think I made his head a splode.

“Jerry Springer” from Running With Scissors by "Weird Al" Yankovic

Comments

5 responses to “A (Very Brief) Vim Experiment”

  1. tamias Avatar
    tamias

    That sounds like an OS X implementation problem. Vim (as in the command line app) works fine with multiple windows, and gvim (graphical) works fine with multiple top-level windows on both *nix and Windows.

    Reply
  2. metaplasmus Avatar
    metaplasmus

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think Nick’s bemoaning the inability to have multiple windows running from within a single instance of gvim, use Command-Tilde to switch between them, etc.

    It’s worth pointing out, though, that if/when you become quick enough with Vim’s keystrokes and have ctags and various other navigationally-helpful things set up, you probably won’t miss it. At all. ;)

    Reply
  3. tamias Avatar
    tamias

    That would make more sense. I was assuming top-level actually meant top-level.

    Reply
  4. Nicolas Ward Avatar
    Nicolas Ward

    In the Mac paradigm, top-level is within the scope of an application, because there aren’t windows that don’t belong to an application.

    Reply
  5. llamaontheloose Avatar
    llamaontheloose

    I think I made his head a splode.

    VIM lesson #1: s/splode\./spleen!/

    (You MUST click the link. I am so not joking.)

    Reply

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