Setup
Vim > Neovim
Vim comes pre-installed in most distributions of Linux and on MacOS. However, I would recommend using Neovim instead.
Neovim is a refactor of Vim. It offers significant improvements with regards to the plugin API, codebase, and developer community. There is a good discussion here.
For me, I found out about Neovim after running into a lot of problems getting Copy and Paste to work properly on MacOS (some issues with my version of Vim not using the global clipboard).
Install Neovim
On MacOS, simply use Homebrew:
$ brew install neovim
There are more installation instructions here:
https://github.com/neovim/neovim/wiki/Installing-Neovim
Alias vim to nvim
This is also optional, but I found it really useful. This allows us to type vim (instead of nvim) to open Neovim.
$ alias "vim=nvim"
Note: the rest of this tutorial, in general, will use "Vim" even though we will be using Neovim. However, the procedures covered in this tutorial will work interchangeably between Vim and Neovim.
Map Caps Lock to Escape
I recommend mapping the Caps Lock key to the Escape key for 2 reasons.
- the Escape key is how we return to Normal Mode in Vim (more on Modes later on). As such it's like a reset / "stop" key in Vim - you'll use it a LOT, and it's much easier to reach the Caps Lock key than the Escape key!
- the Caps Lock key is not really used for any thing useful
On MacOS, open System Preferences > Keyboard > Modifier Keys...
Then, change the mapping for Caps Lock key to Escape.
