[vox-tech] serendipity with vim

[Mark K. Kim]

I guess I don't really think of a lot of Vim features I use as anything
special since my "wow"-ness with most of the features I use have passed
and have become a part of my everyday life.

Since I mentioned vsplit, I should mention that Vim can show you the diff
between two files using its vsplit function.  Vim can show you the diff
between two files side-by-side, and use its syntax highlighting to show
you which part of the lines are different.  To run it:

   vim -d file1 file2 [file3...]

And the two files will open side-by-side, and the diff between the files
will be hilighted.  You can move between the two files and edit parts of
the file you want changed/updated/etc.  Instead of typing -d, you can also
symlink "vimdiff" to "vim" (or gvimdiff, if you want the graphical
version) to make it run in diff mode automatically.


Another Vim feature I use, which I think is just the awesomest thing I've
never seen anybody else use, is the HTML conversion.  You can open a file
under gvim (but not vim), turn on the syntax highlighting, and generate an
HTML version of the file with syntax highlights from the menu item
[Syntax] -> [Convert to HTML].  It then splits the window with the HTML
code, which you can save to a file.  I've used this in all my
presentations so I don't have to manually generate syntax-highlighted
sourcode on slides.  This works only under gvim, not vim, for some reason;
it might be some GTK feature Vim needs to generate the HTML.


More and more features: I prefer gvim over vim because it plays nicer with
X and colors are better and the menu is sometimes useful and all that good
stuff.  You can copy a highlighted (Ctrl-v) text to the X buffer by
copying the data to the "*" buffer, so you can paste it into another app
via the middle mouse button.  I think this works only under gvim, though:

   "*y       - yanks a line into the * buffer

It's useful mostly if you have a really really large data you don't wanna
copy via the mouse.

-Mark


On Fri, 2 Apr 2004, Mark K. Kim wrote:

> On Fri, 2 Apr 2004, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
>
> [snip]
> > really great for programming.  one of the uses is when i'm editing a
> > function and need to see another function that's way down in the source
> > file.  i can bring them "close together" by folding.
> [snip]
>
> I use screen splitting for that instead of folding.  It's more intuitive,
> I think:
>
>    :split - splits the screen in half
>    Ctrl-w k - move to the window above (you can use <up> instead of k)
>    Ctrl-w j - move to the window below (you can use <down> instead of j)
>    Ctrl-w 10 + - enlarge the current window by 10 lines (or use mouse)
>    Ctrl-w 10 - - shrink the current window by 10 lines (or use mouse)
>
> You can also split the window vertically via ":vsplit" and move between
> them with `Ctrl-w h` and `Ctrl-w l`.  Each window is a separate window in
> its own right, so you can open different file in each window, close it
> via `:q`, etc. and you can split window as many times as you want, so it's
> useful for comparing several different files, too.  There are some minor
> querks you might notice, but nothing that bothers me too much.
>
> -Mark
>
> --
> Mark K. Kim
> AIM: markus kimius
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-- 
Mark K. Kim
AIM: markus kimius
Homepage: http://www.cbreak.org/
Xanga: http://www.xanga.com/vindaci
Friendster: http://www.friendster.com/user.jsp?id=13046
PGP key fingerprint: 7324 BACA 53AD E504 A76E  5167 6822 94F0 F298 5DCE
PGP key available on the homepage