Updated Script

execute

    git clone https://github.com/ILMostro/vimUser-Home.git
    cd vimUser-Home/
    ./addplugins.sh

to download this repo into the current directory; by executing the addplugins.sh script,

• the ~/.vim directory is created
• confDotvim, templates directories and abbreviations.vim is copied into ~/.vim
• the ~/.vim folder is populated with the pathogen plugin for vim,
• the bundle directory is created,
• and the list of chosen vim-plugins are initialized as git submodules in the bundle directory.

vimUser-Home

This repo holds various snippets, templates, and other configuration options for VIM-7.2+, which I prefer to keep in the user's home directory under /home/user/.vim/ I'd like to point out that this README file has become a Notepad of sorts to mark, copy, paraphrase, and expand on the bits and pieces of particular interest from the book Hacking Vim by Kim Schulz. It's the best source of valuable advice in a concise and functional writing style. Though, it's not the only source of information upon which this site is based, it is the most useful to me; both in its scope about the seemingly limitless power of vim as well as in its functional writing style, which tames vim long enough for the reader to understand it and, perhaps, adapt it to his/her own workflow.

Templates

The [templates folder] holds language-specific template files which all have the ".tpl" file extension. Their contents are inserted into a newly-created page with the various language-specific file extensions, i.e. html.tpl, java.tpl, c.tpl, etc. Meaning, when you create a new file, e.g. index.html, VIM will use the template named html.tpl (whatever you decide to include in it) to fill in the skeleton of the new file you'll want to create. VIM only does this with newly-created files, not with existing files which already contain their own lines of code/text. You are free to create templates for any programming language as long as they adhere to the above-mentioned naming standards. IMPORTANT: Those "templates" need to be sourced in user's .vimrc file like so:

autocmd BufNewFile * silent! 0r $HOME/.vim/templates/%:e.tpl

Further options include creating placeholders and mapping a shortcut key to jump between them as you insert the text. For example, in the HTML template:

<title><+INSERT TITLE+></title>

The following key-mapping binds Ctrl-k to jump between the placeholders enclosed with the <+ +> tags.

au FileType html nnoremap <c-k> /<+.\{-1,}+><cr>c/+>/e<cr>

This will ensure that the mapping works in INSERT mode as well:

au FileType html inoremap <c-k> <ESC>/<+.\{-1,}+><cr>c/+>/e<cr>

Alternatively, you can leave out the au FileType html part of the keymapping to apply it to all filetypes (as long as you put placeholders between <+ +> tags); or, you can just append more filetypes in a comma-separated list: html,java,c,...etc.

-Abbreviations as Templates- In order to expedite the workflow when coding, we can use the Abbreviations method to, essentially create templates on a smaller scale: i.e. by creating a html.patterns.tpl file in our [templates] directory, we can for patterns instead of just for FileTypes.

Key-mapping

Furthermore, the shortcut key-mappings are all stored in the confDotvim/mappings.vim file. Once again, they are sourced in the '.vimrc' file as such:

`source /home/user/.vim/confDotvim/mappings.vim`

Also, the abbreviations.vim file holds, tadaa! abbreviations, what else. Set them in INSERT-mode (iabbr) commandline-mode (cabbr) Find more info about abbreviations in VIM at the following link as well as the other listed links at the bottom of that page: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Using_abbreviations

install-plugins Script

Lastly, the addplugins.sh file is a copied/customized/edited version of one included in sontek's github/dotfiles repo . It's also referenced in his tutorial on using VIM for coding in Python.

MORE TO COME...