fgnj wrote:I honestly have no idea how people managed before GUI.
Vim was created as a vi clone on the Amiga; very much post-GUI. Apparently Bram M. saw the need for it.
But the whole idea (and, IMHO, advantage) of ex/vi/Vim is that you do everything without your hands ever leaving the typing position. Even the ubiquitous escape key -- on the machine where Ex/Vi were created, "Esc" resided roughly where modern keyboards have their Caps-Lock. (One common hack is to re-map Caps-Lock to Esc, another is to get used to Ctrl-[ instead, which -- on the US keyboard -- is easy enough to reach.) And you get to "talk" to it with commands that have strong mnemonics, instead of clicking some GUI item that might change looks and/or position in the next version.
The downside is, of course, that you don't get to fully embrace that workflow until you got somewhat acquainted with Vim's idosyncracies.
Once you do, you can work multiple files in buffers (open as "vim file1.txt file2.txt", switch with ":bn" / ":bp"). Or multiple windows (open as "vim -o file1.txt file2.txt", switch with "Ctrl-w Ctrl-w" for the beginning and learn all the other window-manipulating commands later). Or multiple tabs (open as "vim -p file1.txt file2.txt", switch with ":tabn" / ":tabp"). Or a combination of all of those.
And once you got the setup you liked for any given project, save it with ":mksession session.vim", and pick things up again with "vim -S session.vim".
And so it goes on. You try to use Vim like Notepad "with some quirks", it's a pain in the backside. (And believe me, I've been there, and remained there for many a year before seeing the light.) You need to fully embrace it being different to get the benefits.
I fully agree, though, that things become more difficult once you want to Copy & Paste to / from somewhere
outside of Vim:
- " for access a register
- * for the global register / clipboard
- y for copy ("yank"), p for paste
So "*y for copy, "*p for paste. You
could map those to Ctrl-C and Ctrl-P, but I strongly advise against it. For one, things get funny around Ctrl-C (which you might want later on for, e.g., stop a running macro). For another, you never get to the point of asking "what do you mean,
global clipboard?", which would then bring us to what you can do with the two dozen
other clipboards that can be accessed by the alphabetic keys. After which we would go on to each key being able to hold a macro as well, and a jump mark...
