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Why Vim for Writers?

Vim is well used and well liked by computer programmers and computer scientists, but many of its features make it a productive tool for writers and authors as well. Namely, you can navigate and work efficiently using succinct, keystroke commands, it is highly customizable, makes efficient use of screen real estate, is fast and extremely efficient. Furthermore, many of us have taken the time to get to know Vim for other purposes, and are so impressed we'd like to make use of it for our writing projects.

However, this is not a manual on how to use or learn Vim. Many of these exist, and all of them are better than what I could produce. Rather, this manual is written for the writer who wants to use Vim as his primary text editor for the purpose of producing prose, novels, fiction, a thesis, a treatise, or similar. If you already know how to use Vim, this Woodnotes manual will help you use Vim efficiently as a writer or author. It is a companion volume to the Woodnotes Guide to Emacs for Writers1, and covers the same information.

Your first task then, if you haven't already done so, is to get to know Vim. I recommend the use of a good reference card to learn and remember the commands. There are many available; my personal favorite is the creation of Laurent Grégoire.2 This guide uses the same notation as Laurent's reference card, so it would help to have it in front of you as you continue.

The graphical vi-vim cheat sheet and tutorial3 is an excellent way to learn Vim and serves as a cheat sheet afterwards (they also have a Dvorak version!). And of course, Vim's own tutorial (just type :vimtutor is effective, and should probably be the first place you begin learning this powerful software.


next up previous contents
Next: Gvim vs. Vim Up: The Woodnotes Guide to Previous: List of Figures   Contents
Randall Wood 2009-08-04