Seven Habits of Effective Text Editing

Posted on by yam

Like so many of the tips and tricks and hither-to unknown commands that I find in vim, I wish I have known about this years ago. There are a ton of little tricks in this short piece that are hugely useful.

One trick that I think is just the bee’s knees is *. If you are on a word in command mode, hit * and you will search for that word. Even better though, is the gd trick. When the cursor is on a variable name, typing gd will take you to the declaration of that variable.

The last thing that I think is awesome is "repeat the last change". If I am doing something repetitive, like creating an associative array of static values, I can type the first declaration and then start hitting . in command mode until I have enough declarations for the whole array. Very sweet.

vimrc on Windoze

Posted on by yam 
" This is for vim 7.0 - which has several great improvements.

set nocompatible
"source $VIMRUNTIME/vimrc_example.vim
"source $VIMRUNTIME/mswin.vim
"behave mswin

set diffexpr=MyDiff()
function MyDiff()
  let opt = '-a --binary '
  if &diffopt =~ 'icase' | let opt = opt . '-i ' | endif
  if &diffopt =~ 'iwhite' | let opt = opt . '-b ' | endif
  let arg1 = v:fname_in
  if arg1 =~ ' ' | let arg1 = '"' . arg1 . '"' | endif
  let arg2 = v:fname_new
  if arg2 =~ ' ' | let arg2 = '"' . arg2 . '"' | endif
  let arg3 = v:fname_out
  if arg3 =~ ' ' | let arg3 = '"' . arg3 . '"' | endif
  let eq = ''
  if $VIMRUNTIME =~ ' '
    if &sh =~ '<cmd'
      let cmd = '""' . $VIMRUNTIME . 'diff"'
      let eq = '"'
    else
      let cmd = substitute($VIMRUNTIME, ' ', '" ', '') . 'diff"'
    endif
  else
    let cmd = $VIMRUNTIME . 'diff'
  endif
  silent execute '!' . cmd . ' ' . opt . arg1 . ' ' . arg2 . ' > ' . arg3 . eq
endfunction

" It takes a lot of doing to get vim (which is really gvim)
" to behave properly on Windoze, but I've got something that
" works a bit.  I have to turn auto-indenting off because it
" constantly screws up, but it's better than notepad.

colors pablo
set guifont=Lucida_Console:h10:cANSI
set nocompatible
set backspace=indent,eol,start
set ruler
set nocompatible
set showcmd
set ts=2
set shiftwidth=2
set expandtab
set shiftround
set smarttab
set tw=72
set hlsearch
set lines=56
set autoindent

set incsearch
filetype plugin on
syntax on

:inoremap ( ()<Esc>i
:inoremap [ []<Esc>i
:inoremap " ""<Esc>i
:inoremap { {}<Esc>i
:inoremap < <><Esc>i

:abbr teh the
:abbr hte the
:abbr adn and
:abbr nad and
:abbr taht that
:abbr htat that
:abbr fo of
:abbr ot to

" SmartTab wrapper
function! SmartTab()
  let col = col('.') - 1
  if !col || getline('.')[col - 1] !~ 'k'
    return "<tab>"
  else
    return "<c-p>"
  endif
endfunction

" turn on SmartTabs
inoremap <tab> <c-r>=SmartTab()<cr>

" Turn on the spellcheck
setlocal spell spelllang=en_us

X.org Config with Wacom Tablet

Posted on by yam 
#
# This is my X.org config for a Matrox G450 dual head with only one monitor
# attached, configured to use a Wacom tablet
#

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Matrox PowerDesk configured."
    Screen      0  "Display 1" #RightOf "Display 2"
    #Screen         "Display 2" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "PS/2 Mouse" "CorePointer"
    #
    InputDevice     "cursor"     "AlwaysCore"
    InputDevice     "stylus"     "AlwaysCore"
    InputDevice     "eraser"     "AlwaysCore"
    #
EndSection

Section "Files"
    RgbPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
    ModulePath  "/usr/X11R6/lib/modules"
    FontPath    "/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType"
    FontPath    "/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/CID"
    FontPath    "/usr/local/fonts/unicode"
    FontPath    "unix/:7100"
    FontPath    "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc"
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load  "ddc"
    Load  "GLcore"
    Load  "dbe"
    Load  "extmod"
    Load  "glx"
    Load  "bitmap"
    Load  "speedo"
    Load  "type1"
    Load  "freetype"
    Load  "record"
#    Load  "wacom"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
    Option "AllowMouseOpenFail" "true"
    Option "Xinerama"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "Keyboard0"
    Driver      "keyboard"
    Option      "CoreKeyboard"
    Option      "XkbRules" "xfree86"
    Option      "XkbModel" "pc105"
    Option      "XkbLayout" "us"
    #Option      "XkbLayout" "us_intl"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "PS/2 Mouse"
    Driver      "mouse"
    Option      "Protocol" "PS/2"
    Option      "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
    Option      "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option      "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
    Option      "Emulate3Timeout" "70"
    Option      "SendCoreEvents" "true"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier "cursor"
        Driver "wacom"
        Option "Device" "/dev/input/event2"
        Option "Type" "cursor"
        Option "USB" "on"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier "stylus"
        Driver "wacom"
        Option "Device" "/dev/input/event2"
        Option "Type" "stylus"
        Option "USB" "on"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier "eraser"
        Driver "wacom"
        Option "Device" "/dev/input/event2"
        Option "Type" "eraser"
        Option "USB" "on"
EndSection

#Section "Monitor"
#   Identifier   "Display 1"
#   VendorName   "CPQ"
#   ModelName    "CPQ1330"
#   HorizSync    30.0 - 85.0
#   VertRefresh  50.0 - 150.0
#   Option       "DPMS" "true"
#EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier   "Display 1"
    VendorName   "CPQ"
    ModelName    "CPQ1330"
    HorizSync    30.0 - 50.0
    VertRefresh  50.0 - 90.0
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "MATROX CARD 1"
    Driver      "mga"
    VendorName  "All"
    BoardName   "All"
    BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

#Section "Device"
#   Identifier  "MATROX CARD 2"
#   Driver      "mga"
#   VendorName  "All"
#   BoardName   "All"
#   BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
#   Screen      1
#EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "Display 1"
    Device     "MATROX CARD 1"
    Monitor    "Display 1"
    DefaultDepth     24
    SubSection "Display"
        Depth     24
        Modes    "1024x768" "1024x768" "1024x768" "1024x768" "1024x768"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

#Section "Screen"
#   Identifier "Display 2"
#   Device     "MATROX CARD 2"
#   Monitor    "Display 2"
#   DefaultDepth     24
#   SubSection "Display"
#       Depth     24
#       Modes    "1024x768"
#   EndSubSection
#EndSection

Section "DRI"
    Mode         0666
EndSection