On Sat, Dec 26, 2009 at 12:55:36AM +0000, Vegard Øye wrote:
Vim is a programmer's editor, in the true sense of that term. This is most apparent when looking up the documentation. The help files of a "popular" Windows editor like Notepad++ is full of friendly screenshots and easy-to-follow explanations of how you can perform a search and replace on your text in just six simple steps, but makes no mention at all of remapping the internals or tweaking cryptic variables. Vim's documentation has no pictures, but its level of detail is staggering, as seen when issuing ":help <BS>":
[count] characters to the left. |exclusive| motion. Note: If you prefer <BS> to delete a character, use the mapping: :map CTRL-V<BS> X (to enter "CTRL-V<BS>" type the CTRL-V key, followed by the <BS> key) See |:fixdel| if the <BS> key does not do what you want.
This is as no-nonsense as you can get. It is also overwhelmingly newbie-unfriendly. If you were to make a Vimpulse's User's Manual out of it, you wouldn't tell a Vim user anything they didn't know, nor a newbie anything they'd want to hear.
I strongly disagree -- IMO Vim documentation is very clear and useful both for beginners and long-time users, not newbie-unfriendly in any respect (if you really find the Reference Manual -- whence the above quotation -- too "unfriendly", there is also the wordier and more tutorial-like User Manual).
What is it a Vim user doesn't know, then? Emacs, and Emacs Lisp. How to (setq ...) variables rather than :set them, how to tweak whatever needs tweaking, how to combine the power of Vim with the power of Emacs. All of this should be shown by example. When you've never used Lisp before, it is okay to copy and modify an expression without understanding completely how it works.
For this, there are two Elisp manuals: The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual and A simple introduction to Emacs Lisp programming.