Using Vim like an IDE

I have been looking for a good and lightweight text editor for some time already. I have tried Notepad++, SciTE and others but was not satisfied with any. Although I have been using Vi and Vim to edit files on my server I have never actually tried to use it as a “local” text editor. This is the first time I have taken a deeper look at Vim. So here goes…

You can download Vim here: http://www.vim.org/. After that download these plugins:

• Minibufexplorer: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=159
• Close a buffer without closing the window: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/VimTip622
• NERDTree Plugin: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1658

I am using Ubuntu, so I created a .vim folder inside my home directory. The directory structure is something like this:

/home/wenbert/.vim
/home/wenbert/.vim/plugin
/home/wenbert/.vim/doc

Follow the installation instructions for the plugins after you download and extract them.

Here my .vimrc file can be found here.

How I use my vim

1. I open Vim
2. I issue this command “:NERDTree bookmark_name” (note: you must have an existing NERDTree Bookmark — see NERDTree docs on how to do this)
3. I use NERDTree to browse and open the files.
4. To close a buffer, I just use CTRL+W. The CTRL+W is mapped to :Bclose which closes the buffer without closing the window.
5. I use CTRL+Arrowkeys to switch between the Bufexplorer, NERDTree and the current file I am editting.