Once I wanted to learn taskwarrior and I created a topic to track my challenges (Learning Taskwarrior, one dream at a time - Science and Technology - talkgroup) and it helped me process my thoughts; I’m not sure where I got the “one dream at a time” thing from, except when learning a new topic deeply, I suppose I tend to think about it at night, like a review of the topic in my head…
Anyhow, despite having gotten a powerful new laptop, part of my personal computing is using precise tools, and vi is such a tool for me. I’ve yet to incorporate editor configurations into my personal computing cloud, so that will be a lot of what this topic is about.
I’m going to try going with neovim again. I tried installing from the PureOS repos, but it is still on 4.4, whereas I want the recent 5.0 release. I tried installing from Flatpak, but it uses a non-standard location for config, as well as a weird way to launch from the terminal, so I removed that. Ultimately I am making it portable, like hugo and fossil:
So… in the past I’ve found one or 17 tutorials/config files online, and I’d smash them together into something that I could definitely use, but that knowledge wasn’t persistent enough to withstand a transition to a new system.
Now I’m at the point to decide which editor I will carry into my personal computing, so that means, “forget the scaffold, we’re building a foundation here!”, which surely is more prudent than it sounds, architecturally…
Anyhow, I’ve got neovim installed, so it’s time to explore, in two phases:
Defaults and overrides
Plugins/addons/weird stuff that doesn’t fit into ~/.config/nvim/init.vim
o (lowercase o) opens a line below the one you are on and goes into insert mode.
G (uppercase g) goes to the last line in the file.
So, Go will go to the end of the file, open a new line and insert (ready to type).
When opening a file, + (plus) and a number will place the cursor on that line number, and sans a number will place it on the last line of the file: nvim + example.md
set nocompatible " disable compatibility to old-time vi
set showmatch " show matching
set ignorecase " case insensitive
set mouse=v " middle-click paste with
set hlsearch " highlight search
set incsearch " incremental search
set tabstop=4 " number of columns occupied by a tab
set softtabstop=4 " see multiple spaces as tabstops so <BS> does the right thing
set expandtab " converts tabs to white space
set shiftwidth=4 " width for autoindents
set autoindent " indent a new line the same amount as the line just typed
set number " add line numbers
set wildmode=longest,list " get bash-like tab completions
set cc=80 " set an 80 column border for good coding style
filetype plugin indent on "allow auto-indenting depending on file type
syntax on " syntax highlighting
" set mouse=a " enable mouse click
set clipboard=unnamedplus " using system clipboard
filetype plugin on
set cursorline " highlight current cursorline
set ttyfast " Speed up scrolling in Vim
" set spell " enable spell check (may need to download language package)
" set noswapfile " disable creating swap file
" set backupdir=~/.cache/vim " Directory to store backup files.
I feel I live in the tension between narrative writers and programmers. Most of the time that feeling has no relevance: text editing is one arena in which it very much counts.
The reason it takes so long for me to learn nvim is because I don’t need anything more than basic editing, most of the time.
And still, I shall persist. What I’ve gained over the years is valuable on a daily basis.
I wish I had the mental energy to commit to learning more neo(vi)m, but folks, I’m kinda running on fumes.
Anyhow, I wanted to note: I’d like a way to comment lines so I may “quote” them by prefixing each line with the “greater than” bracket (>), so I may quote using the markdown vernacular, of which I am acquainted.
(Sorry; I’m in what I refer to as a “historical” mood [not to be confused with an “ahistorical mood”, which is strikingly similar and unfortunately much more humorous… ])
Okay folks, how do I markdown quote block of text in nvim?
])