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Comment by Pewpewarrows | Hacker News Reader

It'll take a lot to convince me to switch to a new text editor (coming from a perfectly-customized MacVim experience). Sublime Text 2 is the first that has even caught my attention, and each new build has given me more to love about it.

That said, it's going to take real vim bindings for me to actually switch. Of all the amazing features ST2 has been adding, none of them increase my productivity while programming more than vim's modes right now.

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I am thinking exactly the same. I am primarily a vim user and even though Sublime Text 2 looks good, I am not sure how it compares. I might go and look for some feature comparisons.

Try http://vicoapp.com/ - TextMate bundles, a real, Lispy scripting language (Nu), and vim style modal editing. Still has a ways to go in terms of vim command parity, but I've been using it as my main editor for the past month and really enjoying it.

Another vico convert from Textmate here. There are still some rough edges, but overall a pleasant experience. Surprisingly Mac-like for an editor that is fundamentally un-Maclike. It's been my main editor for two weeks, and I don't feel like going back to TM as my main text editor.

The biggest change (other than the fact that it's now primarily vi modal behavior rather than MacOS) is the missing find in project command. I get by with the find cli command, but it would be great if vico had a dialog-driven Find command as well.

Bonus is I'm becoming much more fluid at vi/vim which pays off just about everywhere.

I can't agree more. I love trying different text editors, but I have grown so comfortable with vim that now navigating without hjkl just seems weird as well as many other things. I plan on trying Sublime Text 2. The last time I briefly tried to use it, I did not find a lot of good documentation on how to get started with it. I hope that has changed.

Do you open lots of buffers on a single vim session, or just start a vim from the terminal for the file you want to edit?

I start vim from the directory of the project that particular MacVim window will be working on. From there I use NerdTree and Command-T to open buffers/tabs in the same window.

I do this too. How do you manage switching between open buffers, or closing one without closing the others? I don't have a good solution for the first, and for the latter I find I have to close nerdtree for :bw to work as expected.

use :ls to list the open buffers. Then use :b<number> to switch between buffers.

cool, this is close to what I'd been doing but much faster -- I was typing out :buffer

I use minibufexpl[1] to list the open buffers at the top, and have the up/down arrows mapped to :bp/:bn

[1] http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=159

Just to throw in another $0.02...

I use bufexplorer[1]. There's something about minbufexpl's list that seems unappealing to me when it spans multiple lines. I also have CTRL-j/CTRL-k mapped to :bnext/:bprev. As for closing a buffer, my main window generally has a single vertical split, so I have the following kludge:

    map <C-Q> :vert split<CR>:bnext<CR>:wincmd l<CR>:bdelete<CR>

This creates another vertical window temporarily, advances to the next buffer in that window, activates the window to the right (which still shows the buffer I'm trying to kill), and then deletes that buffer leaving me with two windows again. Amusingly, my older machines were slow enough to catch a glimpse of the third window, but it disappears too quickly to see on my new machine.

[1] http://vim.sourceforge.net/scripts/script.php?script_id=42

edit: described kludge a bit better

You realize that commandT also comes with a 'commandB' command that allows you to navigate open buffers?

hmm, just tried <cmd>B, :commandB, and :CommandB and none worked :/

I am using Janus, so maybe it overwrites this.

https://github.com/carlhuda/janus

I think the parent is mistaken.

I have been looking for the equivalent of CommandT for buffers for a while, and the closest I've found is this: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1890

Unfortunately it's fuzzy file matcher is nowhere near as useful as CommandT's, so you'll have to use them in conjunction.

This one is great for both files and buffers: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1984 FuzzyFinder

  :help CommandT

  ...
                                                   *:CommandTBuffer*
  |:CommandTBuffer|Brings up the Command-T buffer window.
  This works exactly like the standard file window,
  except that the selection is limited to files that
  you already have open in buffers.

and then later...

  MAPPINGS                             *command-t-mappings*

  By default Command-T comes with only two mappings:

    <Leader>t     bring up the Command-T file window
    <Leader>b     bring up the Command-T buffer window

Note that this is only available since 1.1b which was released in March.

Another MacVim user here. I open up a lot of tabs, which works really well for me. The first version of MacVim used to have a sidebar (which was even better) but this is fine too.

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