Sublime Forum

Moving from Vim to Sublime Text

#1

I just started checking out Sublime Text, after using Vim almost exclusively for the past three years. I love Vim, but a lot of Sublime’s features appeal to me, like the minimap, the sleek GUI, and the whole philosophy of the project. But having used Vim for so long, I find it hard to go without the keyboard-driven modal editing. Are there any plans for Vi-compatible keybindings in the future? What features does Sublime Text have that a Vim-user would appreciate?

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#2

Hi Marquee,

After debating for a while, I switched from Vim too. I never got into heavy customization of Vim, though --just key mappings, macros, and the odd script–, but I just loved the Vim modal concept for text editing.

What does Sublime Text have to offer you?

You already know from the front page:

  • Beautiful interface
  • Minimap
  • Automation
  • Multi Select

What I can tell you:

I can live without the eye candy, but it’s nice to have. (Truth be said, I’d miss it now if I had to switch back to Vim…)

ST’s a solid and versatile editor that integrates well with Windows.

Multi Sselect… Impossible to describe --you must see this for yourself in order to realize how useful it is and how well it works. Jon’s done an amazing job.

Automation

ST’s customizations can be as simple or complex as you want them. You can start using it out of the box like a simple editor and its default settings will already give you a good deal of power, but you a lot more is possible too.

Plugins

ST comes with an embedded python interpreter. The editor exposes a rich API to manipulate text, the editor’s interface, etc. Some people have developed some really clever plugins.

Fun

Lots of fun. I don’t know why, but I enjoy using Sublime Text. It makes you feel you are in control without overwhelming you. It sure takes some time to find your way around all the options and config files, but the docs have improved a lot since the last stable release.

More

Macros
Snippets (Text Mate compatible)
Build system
Projects

Key bindings/mappings

Pretty powerful. Truth be said, the system doesn’t work as seamlessly as Vim’s, but I’m already using many Vim’s basic motion commands in ST, like [count]hjkl, gg, G, f, t, visual mode… and mostly they work just fine. I hope key bindings in Sublime Text will get better over time, but the current functionality already lets you emulate Vim’s modes to a great extent.

However, Sublime Text has its own personality. I think you can’t translate every Vim concept to ST, but chances are ST will offer you a way just as efficient or better to do whatever you need to.

To sum up, Sublime Text just feels right. Give it a try, you won’t regret it!

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#3

I think I’ve given Sublime Text a pretty solid go now, but I find I’m missing my Vim features too much. I’ll have a fiddle with the ST keybindings and see what I can do, but otherwise, I think I’ll stick with Vim for now. ST has really impressed me though, and I’ll certainly be keeping a close eye on it.

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#4

Maybe if you mention what you miss then we can help you achieve that in sublime. 99% sure anything VIM can do sublime can do. In fact I think of of the our members ironically his user name is “vim”, I believe he was working on a vim plugin to make sublime have different modes and whatnot from vim.

I myself have used vim and I have to admit is very powerful but then I found sublime and never went back.

To me sublime is like VIM power editing (with some extra goodies like multi-select) combined with Emacs flexibility to do customize it however you want. Win win :smiley:

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#5

I’m using both vim and sublime text 2 right now, on OSX. I love that Sublime Text 2 has a nice interface for browsing files, the minimap was cool at first (fairly useless most of the time), and I love that it uses python for its stuff.

Python. I had to stop editing a file in Sublime and re-edit in VIM to fix tabbing issues in a file. It doesn’t appear that Sublime has a “show me all special characters mode”. And it was confused with two different tabbing modes in the pastes perhaps? Don’t know.

Still working on it. I do wish I could type in 3>> in command mode and get it to tab the next 3 lines like it does in VIM. and other multipliers that I use so often.

Cheers, its a fantastic editor. It allows me to completely forget about TextMate

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#6

Looking at my post above, ST has sure come a long way! For reference to Vim users, Sublime Text now offers:

  • vi-like keybindings

These are implemented in the Vintage package shipped with the editor. To use them, you have to enable Vintage. For details, see sublimetext.com/docs/2/vintage.html.

  • vi-like cmdline mode

Implemented in VintageEx: github.com/SublimeText/VintageEx

Neither of the two modes replicate Vim’s behavior exactly, but they try to integrate better with ST’s features instead.

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