Editing your Vim parameters: .vimrc and .gvimrc
Vim is my editor of choice because it allows me to swiftly move through my code without lifting my fingers from the keyboard. That is, it is a mouse-less text editor. There’s a bit of a learning curve, so if you haven’t jumped into an editor like Vim or Emacs before just hang in there.
If you’re running linux, you can grab it through apt-get, if you’re on a Mac, then check out MacVim, and Windows users should go through the Vim website.
Now that you have your GVim editor (Graphical Vim), you can edit some of its properties using two files: .vimrc and .gvimrc. The first file should already exist within your home directory, and the latter you may need to create (within your home directoy as well).
There are a number of settings you can manually set. For my .gvimrc, for example, I have this:
set lines=40
set columns=78
set guioptions-=m
set guioptions-=T
set guifont=Monaco:h13
This sets the number of lines and columns and eliminates that annoying toolbar so you’re left with a clean window for coding.
The .vimrc controls most of the parameters for your vim editing (how to handle tabs, keybindings, etc). I won’t post an entire tutorial here, but instead here are useful links to get you on your way.
