I can see that the author shares the best distraction-free writing
environment he realized by tweaking plugins and configuration, which
works for himself/herself. Which is awesome.
However, it should be noted that Vim already is a distraction-free
writing environment, and Markdown is quite simple enough. A vanilla
Vim with Markdown highlighting is actually enough. In fact, as long as
being "distraction-free" is concerned, just VI should be enough.
Althought I am all for tweaking, I always keep in mind that sometimes I
am better off tweaking the writing itself, rather than the tools.
I am sharing this because sometimes we tend to get lost in
configuration, and we need reminders to get out.
It's easy to spend hours tweaking the perfect setup, but it's a never ending task. Also the more you tweak it the easier it breaks at each upgrade, and the more you rely on it and miss it when you're not on your personal computer. For this reason I'm reluctant to add mappings such as inoremap jk <Esc> to my .vimrc for fear of getting used to it.
That's basically your age-old argument, which is fine. However, there's nothing wrong with other people optimizing their productivity even further. Personally, I appreciate people who try to tune their editing. It should be a more precise task with less effort. I don't use vim much these days but people are doing a great job in promoting precision:
I understand your sentiment. When it comes to coding, I pay attention to productivity because coding involves so many various tasks and cognitive switches that cause friction and block progress.
But writing, for me, is different. My primary progress blocker for writing is not writing. And spending time tweaking technology is so tempting, and so fun, and very much not writing.
I am, in fact, doing right now not writing, so I should get back to it. (Plain MacVim, using Latex as the markup.)
How often do you have to switch off your main computer? Depending on the frequency and length of your stay on a foreign computer, putting your vim files (including vimrc, set of plugins and custom snippet files) in a github repo might be wise. Then you can get up and running with the same vim environment anywhere that has git installed. Here's mine, for example: https://github.com/tristanpendergrass/.vim
Comments
I can see that the author shares the best distraction-free writing environment he realized by tweaking plugins and configuration, which works for himself/herself. Which is awesome.
However, it should be noted that Vim already is a distraction-free writing environment, and Markdown is quite simple enough. A vanilla Vim with Markdown highlighting is actually enough. In fact, as long as being "distraction-free" is concerned, just VI should be enough.
Althought I am all for tweaking, I always keep in mind that sometimes I am better off tweaking the writing itself, rather than the tools.
I am sharing this because sometimes we tend to get lost in configuration, and we need reminders to get out.
I fully agree.
It's easy to spend hours tweaking the perfect setup, but it's a never ending task. Also the more you tweak it the easier it breaks at each upgrade, and the more you rely on it and miss it when you're not on your personal computer. For this reason I'm reluctant to add mappings such as inoremap jk <Esc> to my .vimrc for fear of getting used to it.
"It's good enough for me so why change it."
That's basically your age-old argument, which is fine. However, there's nothing wrong with other people optimizing their productivity even further. Personally, I appreciate people who try to tune their editing. It should be a more precise task with less effort. I don't use vim much these days but people are doing a great job in promoting precision:
http://vimgolf.com
Vim - precision editing at the speed of thought https://vimeo.com/53144573
I understand your sentiment. When it comes to coding, I pay attention to productivity because coding involves so many various tasks and cognitive switches that cause friction and block progress.
But writing, for me, is different. My primary progress blocker for writing is not writing. And spending time tweaking technology is so tempting, and so fun, and very much not writing.
I am, in fact, doing right now not writing, so I should get back to it. (Plain MacVim, using Latex as the markup.)
Just out of curiosity, what kind of writing are you doing? I always wonder if the combination vim+latex is something used outside the scientific area.
It's a computer science academic paper, so it's still inside that area.
How often do you have to switch off your main computer? Depending on the frequency and length of your stay on a foreign computer, putting your vim files (including vimrc, set of plugins and custom snippet files) in a github repo might be wise. Then you can get up and running with the same vim environment anywhere that has git installed. Here's mine, for example: https://github.com/tristanpendergrass/.vim