Re: An Org-mode clone for Vim

[Jean-Marie Gaillourdet <jmg@gaillourdet.net>]

Hi, 

congratulation to such an excellent project!

Herbert Sitz <hsitz@nwlink.com> writes:

> I've been working on a Vim plugin that is file-compatible with Org-mode and that
> clones a good subset of features.  It's gotten to the point where I'd like to
> put it up on Github and see if anyone wants to use it and/or help develop it
> with me.  So far I've implemented a good subset of Org's functionality and,
> though it has a few rough edges, right now it could be perfectly usable for
> certain people out there who prefer Vim as a text editor, but who have been
> drawn to Emacs' Org-mode because of its features.  My project isn't at the point
> where it has all the features or the polish of Org-mode, but many Org-mode users
> use only a small subset of Org.  For people who prefer Vim and have subsets
> coinciding with my project it could be an option.
>
> I've made a video showing what it looks like and demonstrating some of the basic
> outlining stuff.  I just uploaded it to Vimeo, and it tells me it will be
> available for viewing in a couple hours (i.e., around 3:15pm PST today, Friday
> Nov. 5,2010).  When available it will be viewable at this link:
> http://vimeo.com/16543959
>
> For someone who asks, 'Why would you bother to do this for Vim when it's already
> done in Emacs?", I would have these responses:
>
> 1.  A lot of people don't like Emacs.  It is of course an insanely powerful
> piece of software, but a lot of people can never get accustomed to the chord-key
> command system, or if they do get semi-accustomed they don't like it or it
> causes them physical pain.
> 2.  Some people are of the opinion that, while Emacs is admittedly a great
> operating system/development environment, it lacks a decent text editor.  ;)
> 3.  Emacs and Vim (or Vim and Emacs) are king and queen atop the pile of text
> editors.  What one has the other should have to, to the extent possible.
> 4.  I consider myself a Vim person, but I moved to Org-mode and Emacs myself
> (made almost palatable to me by Viper and Vimpulse) because I wanted to be able
> to publish outlines to PDF and HTML.  Vim has a couple decent outliners but
> nobody has bothered to create good export systems for quality output.  I had
> written some (non-publishing-related) extensions for one of the Vim outliners
> and I knew it wouldn't be that hard to write something in Vim that was
> file-compatible with Org-mode, which would then be able to publish to PDF and
> HTML simply by calling out to an Emacs server.  This was my original goal and
> it's done and works great.

I complete understand your point here, I did the tiniest possible bit of
org-mode emulation in vim, by my self. After more then 10 years of
emacs, I came to realize they beauty and efficiency of the modal input
model used by vim. Since then, I've tried to either make emacs behave
like vim or to make vim behave like emacs. My current approach is to use
emacs with viper+vimpulse+viper-in-more-modes+self_written adaptions and
there are still many things which require to type long chords of
shortcuts. 

I am looking forward to try your vim plugin, since I still use vim for
quick editing tasks.

> 5.  As I did some work I became more curious about all the task management and
> organization features in Org-mode, and how they might be implemented in Vim.  So
> I started coding up stuff for the various Org searches, agenda views, sparse
> trees, column views, date management, etc.  This is actually fun to do and Vim
> is well-suited for doing it.  So I've kept going.  I'm hoping someone else might
> have an interest in doing this with me.
> 6. As I said in 5., developing this stuff is fun.
>
> That's about it.  If there's any interest I'll do more videos showing how other
> Org-mode features have been implemented in the Vim plugin, and where they stand
> right now in the Vim plugin compared to Org-mode.

I am definitly interested. Keep up the good work. 

Regards,
  Jean-Marie