Here’s a record of the changed I’ve made to my vimrc file:
I’m running a command line only Debian distribution of Linux on a laptop that’s so old I can’t put X on it. I want to use this computer to write on (I like it’s portability), so my goal is to make vim work more like a word processor than a code text editor.
We have an old laptop (Compaq Presario 1275), with 64mb of ram. So basically it can’t even run the Windows 98 OS it was shipped with. I tried using it for a few months just to write on, but it was ridiculously slow, and I couldn’t get it to recognize my USB drive (who uses floppies anymore), so I couldn’t transfer my writings from it to any other computer.
Well, what do you do with old computers? Install Linux. I tried several versions, but the 64mb ram held me back. I looked into upgrading the ram, but that clashes with my tight-wad personality. I couldn’t even get D@M^ Small Linux to work right (because it’s a laptop). I eventually settled on a command line Ubuntu. With 0 images the OS works lightning fast.
My first experience of computers was back in the early 90’s, so I was familiar with DOS, and the command line didn’t intimidate me too much. I went to the library and checked out Unix for Dummies and spent a night bringing myself up to speed on 40 year old software.
My primary use for this laptop is word processing, which leaves me with two programs, nano and Vim. I tried nano, but gave up on it because of it’s word-wrap/line-break issue. So Vim won, and I’ve had fun figuring it out. I’ll never be a die hard Vim fan (because I use the arrow keys to navigate), but I’m enjoying tweaking it, and it’ll work for what I’m doing. Plus, the paranoid side of me likes the fact that maybe 5% of the world would know how to navigate the OS and read my writings.
I’m looking for more ways to hack Vim to make it a better word processor. There is a ton of information about Vim out there, but most of it is about coding in Vim. I like messing around with various languages and scripts, but I’m trying to limit my hobbies, so I’m staying away from that world.
Here’s what I’ve got so far in my vimrc file. I liked the way nano had their F# keys set up so I imitated that.
(update: I’ve added a post just for my vimrc additions, but I’ll leave this post here because it has some of my bashrc additions as well. Eventually, bash will get its own post as well, then I’ll delete the information below.)
“My additions
“Display, or not display line numbers
set nonu
“set nu
“Mapping
“Save and Quit
imap <F2> <Esc>:wq<CR>
map <F2> <Esc>:wq<CR>
“Save
imap <F3> <Esc>:w<CR>i
map <F3> <Esc>:w<CR>
“Force Quit
imap <F4> <Esc>:q!<CR>
map <F4> <Esc>:q!<CR>
“Search for Scene - (This is how I subdivide chapters for easy navigation since I don’t use line numbers.)
map <F12> <Esc>/Scene<CR>
imap <F12> <Esc>/Scene<CR>
“Auto Indents
set ai
“Ignore Case in searches (in case I type “scene” rather than “Scene”)
set ic
“Turn off that irritating beep so my wife doesn’t hate me as well as the visual bee (flicker).
set noerrorbells
set noflash
“Abbiviations
ab teh the
ab Teh The
Here are two web pages I’ve enjoyed:
And here’s some stuff I’ve done to my .bash_aliases file. Mostly just stuff to make navigating my files quicker. Even though I only use this computer to edit text, I still like things to be neatly organized.
PS1=’$' #My distro had a big ugly command prompt by default so I got rid of that.
alias novel=’cd /home/douglas/writings/novels/currentNovelName’
alias words=’wc 0*.txt’ #this way I can get a word count of the actual story and ignore other files in the folder that have just have notes about the story, research, etc.
alias scenes=’cd /home/douglas/writings/novels/currentNovelName; vim scenes.txt’
alias characters=’cd /home/douglas/writings/novels/currentNovelName; vim characters.txt’
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June 9, 2008 
