<div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 3:48 AM, Kevin O'Gorman <<a href="mailto:kogorman@gmail.com" target="_blank">kogorman@gmail.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"> <div class="im">On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 4:49 PM, James Freer <<a href="mailto:jessejazza3.uk@gmail.com">jessejazza3.uk@gmail.com</a>> wrote: > [using xubuntu 10.04... hopefully before the end of this month 12.04!] > > I'm just starting to use Vim but i want to set it up for editing text > WORDS not programming text. > > But first things first; should i use Vim, Vim-gnome, Vim-GTK - with > xubuntu i'd have thought vim-gtk. Looking at the dependencies it > didn't seem to make a lot of difference as far as i could see. As i > like minimal approach maybe i'd be better off using NVI,Vile or Elvis? > > What i want to achieve is to have a console editor that softwraps text > as well as the likes of gedit or leafpad. The two commands i gather > are the following > > :set textwidth=80 > :set formatoptions=t [stands for options characters] > > From what i can work out this command only worked for a file i'm > typing not one i've originally typed in gedit and then open in Vim. I > think there are some technicalities with .txt files which i'm not > familiar with and would be grateful if someone could put me right. > Perhaps i'd just be better to stay with gedit and use from the CLI > when there. > > thanks > james </div>Vim is a text editor, not a word processor. You can sort of make it work, but it will never be as good as a word processor if you want it to be flexible about line breaks as you edit lines, be aware of paragraphs and so on. I have used vi and clones like vim since 1984, but only for writing code, code documentation, and short notes. For readable text, especially with proportional fonts, I use the editors built into browsers for email, and libre- open- or star- office for documents. Maybe others have other ideas. -- Kevin O'Gorman, PhD <div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"> -- xubuntu-users mailing list <a href="mailto:xubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com">xubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com</a> Modify settings or unsubscribe at: <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-users" target="_blank">https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-users</a> </div></div></blockquote></div> another idea is to write latex code with vim (and use xelatex to compile it to pdf)