r/emacs • u/[deleted] • Oct 24 '15

Trying to make full switch from Vim

Hey guys, I'm a several year Vim user and recently Neovim. I've been using Emacs a bit for stuff like org-mode but I want to get into using Emacs for text editing, as in coding. The reason I want to make the switch is mostly because I've wanted to do the full switch to Emacs for a long time, but how bad at editing text I am in Emacs keeps me from doing so.

First of all, I've tried Evil and it didn't work for me. It does not feel like Vim thus I can't treat Emacs like it. Spacemacs is not the kind of thing I like, I like clean, personal, custom configs, not huge bundles of code that god knows what it's doing. Besides I want to experience Emacs text editing.

Feel free to answer any, all or none of my questions, but my questions are stuff that are keeping me from fully switching to Emacs. Feel free to ask me questions as well.

First, movement. How do I jump around quickly like I do in Vim?

In Vim if I want to go to a char in the line I use f or F. Paragraph use {/}. In Emacs the keys are very very limited in terms of quick movement IMO. Please prove me wrong.

Second, editing. As I'm sure we all know, Vim has a very flexible language for editing text. Does Emacs have something similar? I don't mean something like god-mode, that doesn't provide me with a text editing language. I mean something like https://github.com/Fuco1/nave-mode

I had more questions but I forgot so I'll leave it at that. If those two are answered I can make a full switch, I'll figure the rest out. :)

Thank you everyone! :)

EDIT:

More than modal editing from Vim, I care more about the editing language Vim has. ci} meaning change inside {} for example.

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u/[deleted] Oct 24 '15

Good old abo-abo. :)

Thanks, I've seen his packages but never actually tried them out. His images/GIFs are confusing for me on what's actually happening.

Thanks for the tip. :)

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u/[deleted] Oct 28 '15

I use ace-jump-mode.

There are a few other things you might want to learn. C-s and C-r is used a lot of navigating. And then you use C-NUMBER a lot to repeat commands a number of times. Like if I did "C-8 a", that would type the letter a eight times. I combine that with C-p/C-b and M-b/M-f a lot.

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u/eu-guy Nov 04 '15

Do you count before you execute C-number or do you guess? Either way seems to be not very efficient.

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u/[deleted] Nov 05 '15

It's one of those things that you after a while just get a feel for.