You will not be using Vim to do any writing during this phase – instead you will spend 15 minutes everyday doing the Vim Tutorial. (Mac users can launch it this way, while Windows users can launch it using this method. For Windows and Mac users, you can download it from the official site.

Linux users already have Vim pre-installed – launch it via the terminal emulator of choice. Wherever possible I will link to the respective YouTube tutorial that I learnt from. vimrc configuration file for prose writing. This part of the article isn’t necessarily a tutorial but a series of recommendations, including an examination of a. Where do you start once you’ve installed it? Now let’s say you are a writer who wants to start using Vim. I won’t speak extensively about using Vim in the Apple ecosystem, but a cursory glance at the reviews for this app tells me that somewhere someone needs Vim no matter what device they are using. Vim’s main benefit from this perspective, therefore, is that it is cross-platform – no matter what device you are on, Vim will work. Vim was the perfect solution for me, and how I work while I won’t argue that my new workflow is the best way for writers to work in the modern world, I will argue that it is important for writers to have a tool that works across all our devices, and is powerful enough to meet the needs for the different kinds of writing that we writers engage in everyday. This is pertinent because I have four devices, including an Android phone, a main daily driver laptop running Linux, and a couple of older laptops, including a Mac, I take when I go outdoors for shoots. If you are a writer, I urge you to read that part 1 before continuing here.Įssentially, I argued that the more devices you use, the more writing tools you’ll need, the more complex the workflow eventually becomes. In my first column I spoke about why I moved my writing to Vim – away from the standard tools of modern writers such as word processors (MS Word and their open source equivalents), text editors (Notepad since I’ve been a Windows user until last year), and cloud based storage technology.

Mac vim config files