├── .gitattributes
├── README.md
├── steep.svg
└── writing.vimrc


/.gitattributes:
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1 | # Auto detect text files and perform LF normalization
2 | * text=auto
3 | 


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/README.md:
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  1 | # writing vim
  2 | 
  3 | An awesome-ish list of vim for writers. Geared towards beginners,
  4 | but hopefully useful for others too.
  5 | 
  6 | 1. [why](#why)
  7 | 2. [getting started](#getting-started)
  8 | 3. [writing with vim](#writing-with-vim)
  9 | 4. [a note on markup languages](#a-note-on-markup-languages)
 10 | 5. [plugins for writing](#plugins-for-writing)
 11 | 6. [colorschemes](#colorschemes)
 12 | 7. [general vim resources](#general-vim-resources)
 13 | 8. [other resources](#other-resources)
 14 | 9. [contributing](#contributing)
 15 | 
 16 | **Note:**  
 17 | - :+1: excellent
 18 | - :eyes: new 
 19 | 
 20 | ## why
 21 | 
 22 | **So... why use a text editor for writing over a word processor like
 23 | Microsoft Word, Apple Pages or Google Docs?**
 24 | 
 25 | Well, many reasons, but the most important/obvious are:
 26 | 
 27 | - The separation of [text and styling](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_content_and_presentation)
 28 |   and the productivity boost that comes with that—essentially they force you to
 29 |   focus on the text instead of faffing about with fonts and headings.
 30 | - They use an open, non-proprietary, plain text file format, meaning you can
 31 |   rely on your files being usable fifty years from now.
 32 | - Text editors are faster, lighter, and appear less prone to bugs and/or
 33 |   crashes.
 34 | 
 35 | **You could say the same thing about Notepad, why use vim?**
 36 | 
 37 | Yes, and if you want to use Notepad or TextEdit or the like, you should.
 38 | Whatever is most comfortable for you. But with vim, the positives of
 39 | plain text files also apply to the editor itself. It’s reliable, tested,
 40 | lightweight and cross platform—it’s available across all operating systems
 41 | including iOS and Android—and your can use the same config across all your
 42 | devices. More than that though is the powerful and unrivalled editing
 43 | language (described in detail in some of the links below) that strives to
 44 | increase editing effects. Add to that the deep customisability and you can
 45 | shape vim into a productive and personal tool.
 46 | 
 47 | ![steep](steep.svg)
 48 | 
 49 | The elephant in the room is Vim’s steep learning curve. And yeah there is
 50 | no getting around that. But for prose that curve is
 51 | steep but not high, a two or three runs through vimtutor, the first step
 52 | on the vim highway, and reading some of the links in *general vim*, is
 53 | enough to start.
 54 | Anyway, I recommend at least reading both [Coming home
 55 | to vim](https://stevelosh.com/blog/2010/09/coming-home-to-vim) and
 56 | [Everyone Who Tried to Convince Me to use Vim was
 57 | Wrong](https://yehudakatz.com/2010/07/29/everyone-who-tried-to-convince-me-to-use-vim-was-wrong/)
 58 | before deciding in vim is for you.
 59 | 
 60 | ## getting started
 61 | 
 62 | The below links show vim can be a powerful and flexible editor of prose,
 63 | with near endless configuration options. Perhaps too many options. But you
 64 | don’t need to learn it all at once, especially if your focus is
 65 | writing prose.  Here’s a some simple steps to get started:
 66 | 
 67 | Install the GUI version. Either gVim or MacVim. Vim has different
 68 | shortcuts to other editors, you’ll want the menus as backup when starting
 69 | out.
 70 | 
 71 | Bookmark a quality cheat-sheet and the official documentation. You can
 72 | access the docs with `:h <topic>` but I find the online copy is easier to browse.
 73 | Check the links below.
 74 | 
 75 | As we have seen, one of the main benefits of vim is its configurability.
 76 | But again, for prose, there’s only a few settings you need. For convenience
 77 | you can download a super minimal vimrc here:
 78 | 
 79 | [minimal vimrc for writing](writing.vimrc)
 80 | 
 81 | This will set up backspacing and word wrapping to work as you would expect
 82 | in traditional editors.
 83 | 
 84 | ALSO use the mouse if you want!
 85 | 
 86 | ## writing with vim
 87 | 
 88 | Here is collection of links on using vim for prose. The criteria for this
 89 | section is that I think the link is *interesting* (with the usual
 90 | disclaimer that I do not necessarily endorse the opinions expressed or
 91 | their authors).
 92 | 
 93 | - [3 shell scripts: Kill weasel words, avoid the passive, remove duplicates](https://matt.might.net/articles/shell-scripts-for-passive-voice-weasel-words-duplicates/) - Matt Might :eyes:
 94 | - [Configuring Vim as a Writing Tool](https://news.itsfoss.com/configuring-vim-writing/) - Its FOSS
 95 | - [English Words Completion inside Neovim/Vim](https://jdhao.github.io/2019/04/26/words_completion_nvim/) - jdhao
 96 | - [How I'm writing my book using Vim, Git and Ruby](http://blog.chrismdp.com/2010/11/how-im-writing-my-book-using-git-and-ruby/) - Chris Parsons
 97 | - [Real-time LaTeX using Vim/Neovim, VimTeX, and snippets](https://ejmastnak.github.io/tutorials/vim-latex/intro.html) - ejmastnak
 98 | - [The Woodnotes Guide to Vim for Writers](https://therandymon.com/woodnotes/vim-for-writers/vimforwriters.html)
 99 | - [Using Vim for writing Prose](http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2013/06/17/using-vim-for-writing-prose/) - terminally incoherent
100 | - [Vim for Writers](https://www.naperwrimo.org/wiki/index.php?title=Vim_for_Writers) - NaperWriMo Wiki
101 | - [Vim for Writing](https://raivivek.in/2016/09/vim-for-writing/#) - Vivek
102 | - [WRITING PROSE IN VIM](http://ultralight.cc/posts/71ab285a0c633f47.html) - ultralight
103 | - [Writing Markdown in Vim](https://codeinthehole.com/tips/writing-markdown-in-vim/) - David Winterbottom
104 | - [Writing a Book with Pandoc, Make, and Vim](https://keleshev.com/my-book-writing-setup/) - Vladimir Keleshev
105 | - [Writing with Vim](https://jamierubin.net/2019/03/21/writing-with-vim/) - Jamie Todd Rubin
106 | - [Writing, Editing and World-Building at the speed of thought with Vim](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ORWaIqyj7k) - Theena Kumaragurunathan
107 | - [You (probably) don’t need Vimwiki](http://joereynoldsaudio.com/2018/07/07/you-dont-need-vimwiki.html) - Joe Reynolds
108 | - [take notes using LaTeX and Vim](https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-1) - Gilles Castel
109 | - [using vim to write prose](https://n3wjack.net/2022/02/07/using-vim-to-write-prose/) - n3wjack
110 | - [writing prose in vim](https://jonathanh.co.uk/blog/writing-prose-in-vim/) - Jonathan Hodgson
111 | - [Self-publishing a book with reStructuredText, Sphinx, Calibre, and vim](https://digitalsuperpowers.com/blog/2019-02-16-publishing-ebook.html) Nick Touran :eyes:
112 | 
113 | 
114 | ## a note on markup languages
115 | 
116 | While not essential, when writing in plain text you may want to markup your
117 | er... text to show emphasis and the like. You’ve heard of
118 | [Markdown](https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/) but
119 | there’s many markup languages to choose from:
120 | 
121 | - [AsciiDoc](https://asciidoc.org/) is both older and a bit more complex than Markdown. It does have some nice features of its own.
122 | - [Commonmark](https://commonmark.org/). With so many flavours of Markdown, I suggest using commonmark to avoid confusion.
123 | - [Djot](https://djot.net/) is a new attempt at refining Markdown.
124 | - [Fountain](https://fountain.io/) is a markup language for writing screenplays.
125 | - [LaTex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX) is the grandma of markup languages. Big and intimidating. Used in academia. A little beyond the scope for us.
126 | - [Typst](https://github.com/typst/typst) Typst is a new markup-based typesetting system designed to be “as powerful as LaTeX while being much easier to learn and use”
127 | - [txt2tags](https://txt2tags.org/) super minimal markup language
128 | - [reStructuredText](https://docutils.sourceforge.io/rst.html) perhaps markdown’s main rival
129 | 
130 | ## plugins for writing
131 | 
132 | Vanilla Vim is more than capable. You can, of course, to customise it to
133 | make it fit better into your workflow. Check the documentation for options
134 | you may want to enable, and then check out Vim’s plugin ecosystem.
135 | This second step is optional.
136 | 
137 | For information on installing plugins see this [video](http://vimcasts.org/episodes/packages/)
138 | 
139 | - [abolish](https://github.com/tpope/vim-abolish). Fancy find and replace :+1:
140 | - [ditto](https://github.com/dbmrq/vim-ditto). Stop repeating yourself.
141 | - [fountain4vim](https://github.com/stevenjaycohen/fountain4vim) is a modern plugin for working with Fountain markup 
142 | - [goyo](https://github.com/junegunn/goyo.vim). Distraction-free writing in Vim. Also [limelight](https://github.com/junegunn/limelight.vim) by the same author
143 | - [gundo](https://github.com/sjl/gundo.vim). Visual undo tree
144 | - [litecorrect](https://github.com/preservim/vim-litecorrect) is a small autocorrect plugin for the ~400 most common typos
145 | - [nrrwrgn](https://github.com/chrisbra/NrrwRgn). Focus on small region of text
146 | - [org.vim](https://github.com/axvr/org.vim). Org mode syntax highlighting and folding for Vim
147 | - [targets.vim](https://github.com/wellle/targets.vim). Vim plugin that provides extra text objects
148 | - [vim-exchange](https://github.com/tommcdo/vim-exchange). Swap words when they’re in the order wrong. Vimcasts has a [tutorial](http://vimcasts.org/episodes/swapping-two-regions-of-text-with-exchange-vim/) :+1:
149 | - [vim-fountain ](https://github.com/kblin/vim-fountain) Plug-in for writing screenplays in Fountain markup (disclosure: I have contributed to this)
150 | - [vim-lengthy](https://github.com/Raimondi/vim-lengthy). Colorize sentences by word count
151 | - [vim-lexical](https://github.com/preservim/vim-lexical). Build on Vim’s spell/thes/dict completion
152 | - [vim-markdown-toc](https://github.com/ajorgensen/vim-markdown-toc). An easy way to generate a table of contents for your markdown file
153 | - [vim-online-thesaurus](https://github.com/beloglazov/vim-online-thesaurus). Thesaurus look up
154 | - [vim-pandoc](https://github.com/vim-pandoc/vim-pandoc). Pandoc integration and utilities for vim
155 | - [vim-pencil](https://github.com/preservim/vim-pencil). Rethinking Vim as a tool for writing
156 | - [vim-textobj-quote](https://github.com/preservim/vim-textobj-quote). Use ‘curly’ quote characters in Vim
157 | - [vim-textobj-sentence](https://github.com/preservim/vim-textobj-sentence). Improving on Vim's native sentence text object and motion
158 | - [vim-wordchipper](https://github.com/preservim/vim-wordchipper). Power tool for shredding text in Insert mode
159 | - [vim-wordy](https://github.com/preservim/vim-wordy). Uncover usage problems in your writing
160 | - [vimtex](https://github.com/lervag/vimtex). A modern Vim and neovim filetype plugin for LaTeX files
161 | - [vimwiki](https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki). Personal Wiki for Vim
162 | - [visual-split.vim](https://github.com/wellle/visual-split.vim). Vim plugin to control splits with visual selections or text objects
163 | - [writegood](https://github.com/davidbeckingsale/writegood.vim). Highlight ‘weasel words’ etc
164 | - [focus.vim](https://github.com/merlinrebrovic/focus.vim) Make a split temporarily full screen
165 | 
166 | ## colorschemes
167 | 
168 | Thousands of colorschemes are available for vim, but
169 | most are for dark mode (which I find less suited for long-form
170 | writing). Here are some good light themes:
171 | 
172 | - [Lucius](https://github.com/jonathanfilip/vim-lucius)
173 | - [Pencil](https://github.com/preservim/vim-colors-pencil)
174 | - [Solarized8](https://github.com/lifepillar/vim-solarized8)
175 | - [Paramount](https://github.com/owickstrom/vim-colors-paramount)
176 | - [Paige](https://sr.ht/~leon_plickat/Paige/)
177 | - [Bruin](https://git.sr.ht/~romainl/vim-bruin)
178 | - [vim-paper](https://github.com/yorickpeterse/vim-paper) :eyes:
179 | - [vim-no-color-collection](https://github.com/mcchrish/vim-no-color-collections) Collection of Vim themes with barely any colors
180 | 
181 | ## general vim resources
182 | 
183 | - [A Vim Cheatsheet](https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/vim/)
184 | - [And another one](https://vim.rtorr.com/)
185 | - [Idiomatic Vimrc: Advice on writing your own config](https://github.com/romainl/idiomatic-vimrc) - romainl
186 | - [Learn Vimscript the Hard Way](https://learnvimscriptthehardway.stevelosh.com/) - Steve Losh :+1:
187 | - [Let Vim do the typing](https://georgebrock.github.io/talks/vim-completion/)
188 | - [My vim config](https://github.com/phantomdiorama/vimfiles). You shouldn’t copy it. Check out the above instead.
189 | - [Practical Vim](https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Vim-Edit-Speed-Thought/dp/1680501275) - Drew Neil :+1:
190 | - [Recommendations from #vim](https://www.vi-improved.org/recommendations/)
191 | - [Seven habits of effective text editing](https://www.moolenaar.net/habits.html) - Bram Moolenaar
192 | - [The Documentation](http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/help.html)
193 | - [Vimcasts](http://vimcasts.org/) - Drew Neil :+1:
194 | - [vim galore](https://github.com/mhinz/vim-galore)
195 | 
196 | ## other resources
197 | 
198 | The *if you liked that you'll like this* section:
199 | 
200 | - [Using Git Version Control as a Writer](https://news.itsfoss.com/version-control-writers/)
201 | - [Write plain text files](https://sive.rs/plaintext)
202 | - [Vale: enforcing style guidelines for text](https://lwn.net/Articles/964075/)
203 | - [Improve your writing with the GNU style checkers](https://www.linux.com/news/improve-your-writing-gnu-style-checkers/) :eyes:
204 | - [Exploring Typst, a new typesetting system](https://blog.jreyesr.com/posts/typst/) :eyes:
205 | 
206 | ## contributing
207 | 
208 | Suggestions are welcome! Please create an issue.
209 | 


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/writing.vimrc:
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 1 | " minimal writing vimrc
 2 | " 12 October 2022
 3 | filetype plugin indent on
 4 | syntax on
 5 | 
 6 | set backspace=indent,eol,start  " backspace like you would expect
 7 | set wrap                        " use word wrapping
 8 | set linebreak                   " wrap at word bounds
 9 | set nolist                      " do not show whitespace characters
10 | 
11 | " make j and k move over visual lines
12 | nnoremap j gj
13 | nnoremap k gk
14 | 


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