ViTunes

Totally off topic, but I thought that Geocities was closed for all TLD versions. Apparently I was wrong.

That's awsome times four, people.

So I suppose that you don't want to try the same programmer's Vmail[1] - a Vi-interface for Gmail? (Oh, or even better Twim[2] - a Vi-interface for Twitter!)

More seriously, I thought of it as (1) a cool hack and (2) akin to Zawinski's law[3] about the way that software expands to consume more tasks. More serious Vim hackers might object that it amounts to the Emacs-ification of Vim. (Given the number of plugins to add calendars, todo lists and Org-mode to Vim, I think that battle may be lost.)

[1] http://danielchoi.com/software/vmail.html

[2] https://github.com/danchoi/twim

[3] http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html

While I tend to agree in general, I've actually found pianobar much less distracting than the Pandora web interface.

F5 (my hotkey for Terminal.app), n, Alt+Tab can happen without me really thinking about it, whereas the web interface requires firing up the browser, locating the "Next" button and clicking it.

So I guess I can see this being an improvement if all you're looking to do is skip to the next song. If, as you say, you browse through your albums, etc, then I imagine this would be just as distracting.

I agree with you that the claim that this is some sort of "productivity enhancement" is a bit weak, but as an actual feature, it is pretty impressive. The productivity side of it is immaterial, IMO.

For Chrome users there is Vimium: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dbepggeogbaibhgnhh...

I think most development has moved onto the fork, Pentadactyl: http://dactyl.sourceforge.net/pentadactyl/

My first thought was the other way around: How much would I need to do to make ViTunes control my mpd music? (There seem to be a couple of older Python Vim plugins to do this[1][2].)

[1] http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2856

[2] http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2369

I haven't looked into ViTunes, but most Apple applications are very able to be scripted via AppleScript. If I had to guess, I would think that this is how this is being accomplished.

iTunes can be controlled via AppleScript. This plugin appears to talk to iTunes via a CLI the author wrote in Objective-C which uses Scripting Bridge to talk to iTunes. Scripting Bridge is a cocoa interface to scriptable applications.

Many OS X applications expose part or all of their functionality via AppleScript. To get some idea of what an application offers you can fire up AppleScript Editor, then open the dictionary for a given application. (Rarely, an application will expose more than is shown in its dictionary.)

Now, AppleScript is a truly detestable language, so avoid using it directly at all costs. :-) http://appscript.sourceforge.net/ is much more friendly.

That depends on how many keystrokes it takes compared to the equivalent mouse actions. `c3E` is faster than moving you hand to the mouse, highlighting three words of text that you want to replace, and moving your hand back to the keyboard.

Assuming ViTunes uses a similar set of actions to play music, I could easily see it being a faster way to find and play the songs you want to listen to.

I believe those studies were done with non-experts. Editors like vi and emacs are expert-systems: the upfront cost to learning how to use them is high, but once you pay that cost, you can be extremely efficient in them. I've used vi (well, vim, but just about anyone who uses "vi" is really using vim) as my primary editor for... eight years now. I feel far more comfortable in it than in editors that expect me to do mouse-and-keyboard inputs. I am, however, not a master. If you've ever seen vi or emacs masters write or edit code, it's clear they are faster than they could be if they were in a mouse-and-keyboard interface.

Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of as I slice and dice in vim. But short of recording an editing session for an hour, making note of the things I actually edit, and then trying it with both keyboard/mouse and vim a few times each, I'm not sure how to empirically determine which is faster for me.

Also, a lot of people compare it to "moving your hand allll the wayyy over to the mouse and back", but I do a lot of coding on my laptop, actually, with my trackpad just inches away from the home row.

I could potentially even learn to use the trackpad with my thumb without even leaving the homerow. I wonder if anyone uses it that way?

That study was done in 1989, without experts, before standardized keyboard shortcuts, and in a lab setting rather than actual usage. I really doubt its relevance today, and I'd like to see an updated look at it. I don't think it should be cited as often as it is.

Reference: http://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html

Because it's hackery, and hackery is fun, which is why most of us got into it to begin with.

Your use case and mine, for example, are different. I generally am not a fan of playlists, personally. Occasionally, but not often, I'll want to listen to the same set of tracks again but more often I want a new mix every time. Worse than that, I don't know an hour from now what I'll want to listen to so I find that I generally can only fill out a playlist a couple songs at a time.

Since I need to manipulate my now playing often, having the ability to do so through vim would be basically godlike.

Now, if only it worked for a media player I actually used :/