Vim for iPad

[Bram Moolenaar]

Hello Vim and iPad users,

If you have an iPad, you can now run Vim on it:

http://applidium.com/en/applications/vim/

Obviously not having a keyboard is a drawback, but otherwise it appears
to work well.

--
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/// Bram Moolenaar -- Br...@Moolenaar.net -- http://www.Moolenaar.net \\\
/// sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\ an exciting new programming language -- http://www.Zimbu.org ///
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[Phil Dobbin]

On 20/01/2012 11:43, Bram Moolenaar wrote:
>
> Hello Vim and iPad users,
>
> If you have an iPad, you can now run Vim on it:
>
> http://applidium.com/en/applications/vim/
>
> Obviously not having a keyboard is a drawback, but otherwise it appears
> to work well.
>

I've installed it on my iPhone & all seems OK. I already use iSSH on the
'phone with an Apple wireless keyboard but have yet had the time to try
it with Vim. Can't see why it wouldn't work too though.

Very cool 20th anniversary item.

Cheers,

Phil...

[Chris Lott]

On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 2:43 AM, Bram Moolenaar <Br...@moolenaar.net> wrote:
>
> Hello Vim and iPad users,
>
> If you have an iPad, you can now run Vim on it:
>
> http://applidium.com/en/applications/vim/
>
> Obviously not having a keyboard is a drawback, but otherwise it appears
> to work well.

Wow, what a cool anniversary present. Vim on the iPad is something
I've been dreaming about for a while.

There's at least one immediate issue for me: if I launch vim with my
keyboard already on, the keyboard is non-functional until I turn it
off, wait for the on-screen keyboard to launch, then turn it back on
again. Obviously kind of a pain.

Of course, I assume it is impossible to install plugins?

c
--
Chris Lott <ch...@chrislott.org>

[Andrew Long]

On 20 Jan 2012, at 16:34, Chris Lott wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 2:43 AM, Bram Moolenaar <Br...@moolenaar.net> wrote:
>>

>> <snip/>

>>
>> Obviously not having a keyboard is a drawback, but otherwise it appears
>> to work well.
>

> <snip/>

>
> There's at least one immediate issue for me: if I launch vim with my
> keyboard already on, the keyboard is non-functional until I turn it
> off, wait for the on-screen keyboard to launch, then turn it back on
> again. Obviously kind of a pain.

Yes, I had a similar experience, although maybe I'm missing something simple... I found getting into visual (swipe across the screen) or insert (press 'i') mode easy enough, either with the on-screen keyboard, or with the apple wireless keyboard connected, but I couldn't get out back into normal mode; there's no sign of an 'esc' key on the on-screen, and it wasn't listening to the 'esc' key on the wireless...

>
> Of course, I assume it is impossible to install plugins?

Or additional syntax files?

Regards, Andy

--
Andrew Long
andrew dot long at mac dot com

[David Sanson]

@andy: by default, ESC is remapped to the backslash.

On the question of plugins, syntax files, etc., I haven't had too much of a chance to play with this, and I left my wireless keyboard at the office, so I'm a bit hampered for the rest of the weekend. But it seems to find the .vimrc I created in my $HOME directory without any trouble. The only trouble is that you can't upload dot files via iTunes, so if you want to use an existing .vimrc, you'll have to rename it to .vimrc after you've copied it over. You can do this by using netrw's rename command (hit 'R' while the cursor is within the filename).

There is a .vim folder there too. I'm not sure what the best way is to get plugins into the .vim folder: it doesn't show up in iTunes, and you can't copy folders over using iTunes. I tested a simple plugin by copying it over, creating .vim/plugin from within vim using netrw, and then coping the plugin into .vim/plugin/. The plugin works.

I suspect there is no support for python or ruby plugins, and I suspect plugins that call external cli tools are out, so we are limited to "pure" vimscript plugins. It would be neat of there is a way, within these limitations, to unarchive a folder. If so, there would be a reasonable way to install plugins. If not, we have to wait until we have better file transfer options, I assume.

David

[Chris Lott]

On Sat, Jan 21, 2012 at 11:06 AM, David Sanson <dsa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> @andy: by default, ESC is remapped to the backslash.

I'm having similar problems, which could be related, with getting Vim
to recognize my keyboard, despite knowing the ESC key.

Thanks for the info on .vimrc and plugins... it's going to be fun to
play with this.

[Andrew Long]

On 21 Jan 2012, at 20:06, David Sanson wrote:

> @andy: by default, ESC is remapped to the backslash.
>

Thanks for pointing that out... If I wasn't as blind as I am becoming I'd have noticed the disclaimer at the bottom of the page :( I think I need stronger reading glasses!

> On the question of plugins, syntax files, etc., I haven't had too much of a chance to play with this, and I left my wireless keyboard at the office, so I'm a bit hampered for the rest of the weekend. But it seems to find the .vimrc I created in my $HOME directory without any trouble. The only trouble is that you can't upload dot files via iTunes, so if you want to use an existing .vimrc, you'll have to rename it to .vimrc after you've copied it over. You can do this by using netrw's rename command (hit 'R' while the cursor is within the filename).
>

At first glance, $HOME seems to map to ~ (although it doesn't expand to a full path like my Unix installations do when you try to evaluate them), which looks to be a 'documents' folder under /private/var/mobile/applications/<some long hex representation of the application name>/.

I assume that by 'using iTunes' you mean I should copy a file into the panel to the right of the app when I'm in iTunes and then sync the iPad?

> There is a .vim folder there too. I'm not sure what the best way is to get plugins into the .vim folder: it doesn't show up in iTunes, and you can't copy folders over using iTunes. I tested a simple plugin by copying it over, creating .vim/plugin from within vim using netrw, and then coping the plugin into .vim/plugin/. The plugin works.
>

I can see I have some serious reading of the :he netrw to do over the next littler while... and not on the iPad, whose screen is a little difficult to read at the moment.

> I suspect there is no support for python or ruby plugins, and I suspect plugins that call external cli tools are out, so we are limited to "pure" vimscript plugins. It would be neat of there is a way, within these limitations, to unarchive a folder. If so, there would be a reasonable way to install plugins. If not, we have to wait until we have better file transfer options, I assume.

I tried a :!ls and got 'cannot fork' as a reply, so I guess you're right about external commands. I think my first task though is going to be to find out how to get arrow keys working again.

[David Sanson]

About installing plugins: vimballs seem to work well enough, and don't require futzing around in netrw. Anyone have any tips for creating vimballs from plugins when using Pathogen? I'd like to be able to create vimballs of my favorite (non-python or ruby dependent) plugins on my laptop, and then transfer them over to my iPad. But MkVimball seems to choke on me because the files are in ~/.vim/bundle/pluginname instead of ~/.vim.

Also, anyone using this on a jailbroken iPad? Now that there is an untethered jailbreak for the iPad 2, I am wondering whether that is worth doing. Presumably I could then use a SSH app, like Prompt, to access Vim's folder on the iPad? That would mean I could use scp and git in the usual ways to get stuff into Vim. But then I wonder whether I would just be better off using the console version of Vim available via Cydia, since Prompt has good support for the ESC key on bluetooth keyboards. Or maybe this app also includes a console version of Vim, once I've jailbreaked? Somehow I expect that is not so.

[David Henderson]

On 26 Jan 2012, at 14:20, David Sanson wrote:

About installing plugins: vimballs seem to work well enough, and don't require futzing around in netrw. Anyone have any tips for creating vimballs from plugins when using Pathogen? I'd like to be able to create vimballs of my favorite (non-python or ruby dependent) plugins on my laptop, and then transfer them over to my iPad. But MkVimball seems to choke on me because the files are in ~/.vim/bundle/pluginname instead of ~/.vim.

Creating MkVimball doesn’t care about the directory what it does care about is that the paths to the files are correct. I make vimballs from all the plugins I use as it makes it easier to manage them. I usually create them from within the unzipped folder.  It was slightly non-obvious to me the first time I attempted to create a vimball from a zipped archive. The trick it turned out was to list each file on a separate line with either full or relative path to the directory to which your vimball will get made; then, highlight all the lines and do :MkVimball vimball_name /path/to/vimball. Hope this helps.

David P Henderson
c: xxx.xxx.xxxx
--

"Beautiful bodies and beautiful personalities rarely go together."

    -- Carl Jung

[Zulox4]

This version, without Ctrl key touch, and other bugs, is a useless Vi not iMproved!