How-To: Vim Functionality with Sublime Looks

Just because you’re using a command line editor does not mean you should have to do a back to the days of green screen . This guide will walk through the process of setting up Vim to achieve a more Sublime-like experience. The target audience for this is a non-Vim user that finds him or herself having to hop into a CLI editor from time to time, and is looking for something a bit more familiar aesthetically. time warp CRTs “Will this make me even faster at Vim?” you may ask. Well, most likely not. However, by giving yourself a consistent experience, going between editors will be less disorienting, allowing you to find your place within the same file quickly. Thus, going from your local GUI editor and then jumping into Vim for some quick server-side edits over SSH should be more seamless. As for the whole H,J,K,L home row navigation thing, you’re still on your own on that one. Let’s see what we’ll be working with. _-_Vim colorscheme by vim-monokai Marcin Kulik -Vim configuration file .vimrc -Python package installer pip -Status bar plugin by Powerline Kim Silkebækken This is my rc file. There are many like it, but this one is mine. Without me, my rc file is useless. Without my rc file, I am useless. Adding Monokai Color Theme The default syntax theme used by Sublime is Monokai. This theme is not included with Vim. Luckily, we can get pretty close using vim-monokai. Grab the vim-monokai theme from GitHub, available . here Inside the repo’s folder you should see /colors monokai.vim copy to monokai.vim ~/.vim/colors/ We will add monokai to our vim configuration in the section. Putting it All Together with .vimrc Installing Powerline with pip is a command line package manager used for installing Python packages. This is similar to in the Node world, or in Ruby. pip npm gem We are going to use pip to install the Powerline status bar. This will display what mode we are in (normal, insert, visual, etc.), the Git branch we are working off of, encoding, language, and other useful things. To install it, open your terminal of choice, and enter the below command. pip install --user powerline-status Putting it All Together with .vimrc A dotfile ending in rc designates a configuration file. Other examples of rc files would be for Bash, for Zsh, for Postgre and so on. .bashrc .zshrc .psqlrc Your should be located in your home directory. .vimrc As dotfiles are hidden, you will not be able to browse to it using Finder. Instead, you will need to open the file through a terminal by typing either or . To open it with Sublime Text you can use if you have the alias set up for it. vim ~/.vimrc nano ~/.vimrc subl ~/.vimrc subl Update your so it looks like the one below, lines 5 and 6 are optional. .vimrc An overview on what we’re doing here: -Enable syntax highlighting based on the file format syntax on -Use the Monokai theme we copied over earlier colorscheme monokai -Show line number gutter on the left set number - Show matches while searching set incsearch [optional] - Search highlighting set hlsearch [optional] lines 8 through 10 get us up and running with Powerline in Vim -Keep our status bar visible and properly positioned set laststatus=2 A Final Note on Fonts If you are finding that the Powerline status bar isn’t lining up properly, you may need to install one of the Powerline-specific patched fonts, available . I’m fond of myself. here [Meslo LG M Regular for Powerline.ttf](https://github.com/powerline/fonts/blob/master/Meslo%20Slashed/Meslo%20LG%20M%20Regular%20for%20Powerline.ttf) found under for iTerm2 Change Font Profiles -> [ default profile] ->Text Once the font is installed, you will need to update your terminal’s default font under the preference menu. Questions/Comments/Other? Drop me a line via LinkedIn or GitHub