In case you’re wondering what’s easier:

1. Writing CLI tools e.g. shell scripts + zsh plugins
2. Writing CLI tools using PHP e.g. symfony/console, PHP-CLI, etc

#2 is harder. I tried it over the weekend.

I went through the key-bindings in Micro (which use different modifier keys) and added them to Sublime Text:

    { "keys": ["ctrl+s"], "command": "save", "args": { "async": true } },
    { "keys": ["alt+up"], "command": "swaplineup" },
    { "keys": ["alt+down"], "command": "swaplinedown" },
    { "keys": ["ctrl+left"], "command": "bol" },
    { "keys": ["ctrl+right"], "command": "eol" },
    { "keys": ["ctrl+o"], "command": "prompt_open" },
    { "keys": ["ctrl+z"], "command": "undo" },
    { "keys": ["ctrl+y"], "command": "redo" },
    { "keys": ["ctrl+c"], "command": "copy" },
    { "keys": ["ctrl+x"], "command": "cut" },
    { "keys": ["ctrl+d"], "command": "duplicate_line" },
    { "keys": ["ctrl+v"], "command": "paste" },
    { "keys": ["ctrl+a"], "command": "select_all" },
    { "keys": ["ctrl+b"], "command": "toggleterminuspanel" },
    { "keys": ["ctrl+q"], "command": "close" },
    { "keys": ["ctrl+up"], "command": "move_to", "args": { "to": "bof" } },
    { "keys": ["ctrl+down"], "command": "move_to", "args": { "to": "eof" } },
    { "keys": ["alt+backspace"], "command": "deleteword", "args": { "forward": false, "subwords": true } },
    { "keys": ["ctrl+f"], "command": "show_panel", "args": { "panel": "find", "reverse": false } },
    { "keys": ["alt+shift+f"], "command": "showpanel", "args": { "panel": "findin_files" } },
    { "keys": ["ctrl+t"], "command": "showoverlay", "args": {"overlay": "goto", "showfiles": true} }, // Hurts transpose, but never use.
    { "keys": ["ctrl+e"], "command": "showoverlay", "args": {"overlay": "commandpalette"} },

If you’ve been following along with my Vim/Modal editing debacle, here’s where I’ve landed.

——–

I’m a all-or-nothing person, so since I can’t do modal editing everywhere (without madness) I’m ditching the paradigm

I’ve been playing around with using nano this morning for e.g. Git commits, etc and decided to use micro instead.

Micro is a great editor after-all. Checkout the customizations I’ve made to it to make it more useful:

.config/micro/settings.json

.config/micro/bindings.json

I’m also going to work to have parity with Sublime, here’s what I have so far:

Packages/User/Default (OSX).sublime-keymap#L66.sublime-keymap#L66)

I’m going to start trying to improve my editing techniques in normal editing across my system instead of spamming the GUI menu and sloppy ⌘- combos to get more and more efficient at editing in macOS.

How do Vim’mers deal with the frustration of not being able to edit text (like the one I’m writing, here, on dev.to) everywhere else (outside of e.g. Vim) using modal editing?

I’m not really liking that, yeah, I can get the benefit from modal editing and in Sublime Text (due to e.g. Vintage) but not anywhere else without having to go way-out-there and use something like cknadler/vim-anywhere.

I feel like it might not be worth it to learn a new paradigm if I can’t use it in more places.

Annoyingly, I’ve disabled Vintage for now. I might even consider using e.g. micro for text editing in my terminal.

So last night I enabled Vintage mode in Sublime via a package called NeoVintageous and this evening I’ve disabled NeoVintageous and have enabled Sublime’s built-in Vintage mode with vintagectrlkeys on instead.

The reason is, after a day of NeoVintageous, I find I don’t really need Ex mode stuff (beyond :w which I just like for parity with Vim) because I don’t really want that experience. I don’t want Vim. I just want to edit text in a (modal) language for productivity.

I wanted goto line :# which I thought I could only get from NeoVintageous (as it doesn’t work in Vintage), but turns out I forgot you can #G to get to a line too.

I’m not looking for Vim (or I would just use Vim), or a Vim emulation; I still want the GUI, native, macOS experience. I don’t want to feel like I’m running Vim, but I do want modal editing! I am really more-looking for Sublime + modality, not necessarily Sublime + Vim.

Hopefully Vintage is the way to go here. So far I have been enjoying remembering all the motions, I might even be re-visiting vim-tutor for a refresher. I used Vim for four years in the past and I’ve forgotten so much! I’m not super productive yet (having to Google here-and-there for motions and trying not to cheat).