First of all. This is not another “how do I exit vim?” shitpost.
I’ve been using (neo)vim for about two years and I started to notice, that I,m basically unable to use non-vim editors. I do not code a lot, but I write a lot of markown. I’d like to use dedicated tools for this, but their vim emulators are so bad. So I’m now stuck with my customized neovim, devoid of any hope of abandoning this strange addiction.
Any help or advice?
You can exit vim but you can never quit
Why would you wanna quit if vim works for you?
Plus vim can be an amazing markdown editor with a few dedicated plugins.
Yes, it is amazing, but some things ( like md tables or writing katex eqations) are handled rough. And I still sometimes need to use something other than vim and then life gets hard.
That’s why for tables and katex equations I used plugins to help me with then to not be rough.
As for other stuff than vim, minimize the nees for them if it really gets hard.
Also, some tools have plugins to provide vim controls for them.
I know at least and use these:
- SublimeText (https://github.com/NeoVintageous/NeoVintageous)
- Firefox (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vimium-ff)
There are probably more…
As for other stuff than vim, minimize the nees for them if it really gets hard.
Your vim obsession is looking kinda unhealthy at this point.
I just prefer the vim bindings and motions, not an obsession. I use diff tools almost daily and can manage in them with no issues, but whenever I can use vim binding I will because they just feel better to me.
Accept your fate. VIM is love. VIM is life.
Learn emacs
No joke, Emacs has the ability to render in line markdown, essentially the current line is just text, while the rest of the doc is rendered as markdown titles, links, lists, etc. It’s my favourite way of editing markdown but I’ve never found another editor that does markdown like that. Everything else has text and rendered markdown side by side as separate panes, which I personally hate.
Edit: I stand corrected. Neovim has it too: https://github.com/MeanderingProgrammer/render-markdown.nvim
No joke, Emacs has the ability to render in line markdown, essentially the current line is just text, while the rest of the doc is rendered as markdown titles, links, lists, etc.
This sounds amazing. I’ve been using markdown-mode for ages now though, and I’ve never come across this feature.
How do you enable this?
I have it in my config, will link to a specific commit in case anything changes. Look for the heading called MARKDOWN and I’d recommend grabbing all 3 subsections (MARKDOWN, Markdown Headings, Markdown Concealing). The main part is the last one iirc. Link: https://gitlab.com/theshatterstone/dotfiles/-/blob/6f00007eac475946e11fa3278ffbf526400b7e10/.config/emacs/config.org
Edit: Links from the Table of Contents don’t work in Gitlab, unfortunately, so you’ll have to scroll to it yourself.
The real question is how to make everything a modal editor.
Build a small EMP device. Figure out how to trigger it from terminal. Delete the key bindings for vim. Map them to the trigger you have for the EMP.
… good luck…?
Do you just need to write markdown? Plenty of text editors have a vim mode. Not sure if there’s any lightweight ones that do the markdown preview alongside a vim mode; I know IntelliJ-based IDEs have a vim mode and can preview markdown, but that’s not exactly a lightweight solution, and only the community edition is open source.
But also what exactly is it you’re looking for that Vim can’t do? I use Vim for writing pretty much everything. I use Vim for markdown and it works fine. Markdown is already pretty readable as a text file so I don’t feel the need for a previewer or anything like a rich text editor (but also there are plenty of markdown editors out there if you just want to edit markdown in a RTE).
How about obsidian.md? It’s based on markdown, so edit mode has lots of keybindings, and there are all sorts of javascript plugins to add functionality.
And it also has vim support. You can’t escape.
Haha, I wouldn’t expect anything less. But I don’t need to install the plugin…well…maybe I’ll just try it out for a few…danmit.
i just use vim plugins in the other editors i use.
kate has a vim mode,
vs code has a vim plugin.
intellij has a vim plugin.
obsidian has a vim mode.
a lot of editors have vim modes.if you have a current non vim markdown editor,
try looking for a vim mode.if you dont, obsidian is all about markdown,
and vs code has a markdown preview plugin.Use doom emacs
Find breaker box pull down big switch
Why do you want stop using Vim in the first place? That would be a good information to have, to give help. What dedicated tools do you mean? What do they offer that you miss in Vim? If you just hate Vim and want stop using it no matter what, the only solution is to uninstall it, to not fall into those habits of using it everywhere. Over time you should get used to those other editors and tools.
Find a therapist
Just switch to VSCode or something similar, it has enough features and shortcuts that will quickly make you like at least 80% as productive as you were in Vim. It even has a Vim mode so you can wean yourself off of it more easily.
Honestly never got the appeal of Vim, you need to spend so much time learning and configuring it only to squeeze out a little bit of extra productivity out of it when compared to a “normal” editor/IDE. I don’t see why it’s so important to be able to edit and write code as quickly as possible since most of the time you’re going to be debugging or looking at the code or reading docs.
EDIT: Just noticed you said you don’t code a lot. I think most of what I said still applies, I imagine you don’t spend 99% of the time in the editor typing away.
To your “never got the appeal”.
Ngl for me using vim is the only option. If something needs to be done using a mouse, it’s just not going to be done. I can’t aim properly due to problems with my arms, and it itches something in my brain everytime I try, it makes me literally furious and enraged.
I tried using zed, but quickly found out that I can only control the text field with motions, nothing else.
If I try using mouse, speed of anything I do gets multiplied by 0.1.
Thanks to vim, I’m able to work with loads of text at all.
Simple as that.
I used to use Sublime for notes and then VSCode and those types of text editors work just fine for non code stuff imo. VSCode even has syntax highlighting for Markdown so could be a plus for OP.
The thing is, it’s fun
I haven’t measured it, but I can tell I’m noticably slower on standard editors than Vim.
Eh I’ve seen colleagues that use Vim heavily do their work and they’re like at best 10-20% faster than me when it comes to pure text input/editing, honestly not worth the effort to switch to Vim for me.
