Why Use Vim?
As noted on the page How This Site is Made, this web site is authored using a text editor to prepare plain text files marked up as specified by txt2tags. Txt2tags is then used to convert the marked-up text files to HTML. So you spend most of your time in the text editor. Any text editor will do. Using Vim has several advantages.
- It is available for Unix and Windows machines. Consequently, you can work in the same interface regardless of the type of computer.
- It is scriptable. In fact, Aurelio Jargas, the author of txt2tags, has both a Vim syntax highlighting script and a command to run txt2tags from within Vim. The syntax, which uses different colored text for different structures within txt2tags's mark-up, helps you to quickly find errors in mark-up. Running the convert command from within Vim improves productivity. In short, with Vim you can produce pages with high productivity.
- For Unix/Linux users, there will be a copy of Vim on any computer you sit down at.
Vim for Windows
Windows users will find Vim difficult to learn. Whereas Windows programs use the mouse, arrow keys, Ctrl-key combinations, and the function keys to command the editor (or any other program), Vim uses the keys you use to type. It does this by operating in two different basic modes: command and insert. When in command mode, pressing keys gives commands to Vim. For example, in command mode, pressing the "b" key moves the cursor back one word and the "j" key moves it to the next line. You insert text by leaving command mode with the Esc key. The advantage to this, especially for touch typists, is that you fingers never leave the home keys (although you will have to learn to find that Esc key by touch--you use it so frequently that your fingers will quickly remember where it is). This is so foreign to Windows users that ones who try Vim give up before they've developed the skill to improve their editing speed. It's worth it to persist.
Should You Use Vim?
Vim is so full-featured that it's difficult to learn all of it unless you "grew up" with it or are using it full time. I did neither. I worked in a Windows/Microsoft environment and my use of computers since I retired is hobby use. I've used Vim in managing personal information and editing text off and on for 5 years and I still have hardly touched the surface of all its features. If you're using a text editor more than a couple of hours a day, improving your productivity by using Vim is likely worth the time and effort to learn it. Vim is "free" and you can find it here.