The Only VIM Plugin for Technical Writers
If you are a writer for software related documentation, chances are you’ve used VIM.
VIM is, “is a highly configurable text editor built to make creating and changing any kind of text very efficient.” In other words, it is the kind of text editor that writers will learn to love. It’s highly customizable nature allows it to be leveraged for technical writers.
It’s lightweight nature allows writers to make edits on the fly. It is language agnostic, so it will work if you’re editing for any major language.
By default, VIM is limited. Which is good for the software world which has a unique set of tools it needs to work with.
Vundle is short for VIM bundle and is a plugin manager. The Vundle team describes its features as:
- keep track of and configure your plugins right in the .vimrc
- install configured plugins (a.k.a. scripts/bundle)
- update configured plugins
- search by name all available Vim scripts
- clean unused plugins up
- run the above actions in a single keypress with interactive mode
Vundle automatically…
- manages the runtime path of your installed scripts
- regenerates help tags after installing and updating
Vundle will continue to grow and add new features. At the time of this writing, Vundle has 21k stars and 2.4k forks. They also have a great community on Gitter to help people troubleshoot their way to success.
Gitter is great as the community that is open to help newcomers and people who don’t have a lot of experience with this kind of technology.
Installing Vundle is easy and the Vundle wiki has all you need to get started.
Run the command:
git clone https://github.com/gmarik/Vundle.vim.git ~/.vim/bundle/Vundle.vimThen all you need to do is configure your plugins and you are ready to go.
Do you use VIM for your writing? Which plugins help you in your workflow, let me know in the comments below.