My little Vim adventure continues and a couple of days ago I uninstalled Sublime Text 2. I have nothing against it and I still think it’s a fantastic editor but I feel like I don’t really need it anymore. I’m no way near being a expert but like I’ve stated before I really like using Vim and I don’t see that that changing anytime soon. I’ve also configured my Vim files quite a bit¹ but I’ve tried to stay away from adding too many plugins since I don’t want to rely on too many of them. Right now I use eight which I think is a reasonable number. I also finally re-did my git repository so that every plugin is a git submodule² which makes updating them much, much easier. I have to say that the customization possibilities in Vim are extraordinary. Who knew that that would be the case for an editor that’s just slightly younger than me?

A few tips and tricks

I won’t go through my whole vimrc file since it’s currently about 225 lines long (and heavily commented) but I want to share a few handy settings.

Set the language to english

if has("unix")
  language messages C
else
  language messages en
endif

I don’t know if I’m strange but I tend to stick with using english as my default language in nearly every app I install. I find it to be much easier googling for help. Since I both use Linux and Windows I had to add the if...else...endif part so that it plays nice with both of them³. It’s important to note that this needs to be at the very top of your vimrc file if you want it to work.

Use the cursorline as a mode indicator

au InsertEnter * set nocursorline
au InsertLeave * set cursorline

I wanted an easier way to quickly see which mode I was in without relying on some third party plugin. I of course have the showmode setting enabled but by removing the cursorline from insert mode I don’t even have to move my eyes one bit. I don’t really need to see which line I’m on anyway when I’m actually typing something.

Autoresize all windows

au VimResized * :wincmd =

Resizing your windows in Vim can be a bit of a pain, especially if you want to go from using a fullscreen to something smaller or the other way around. The above setting makes it a lot less of a hassle.

Ignore certain files

set wildignore+=.git

This was one of the features that I like the most about Sublime Text 2 and I’m glad that I can use it in Vim too. If I can’t edit a certain filetype I don’t want to see it.