Make Word Like Vim

I really like Vim and its keyboard commands, but I need the formatting of Word 2011 (mainly because TextEdit only uses 1.25 in. margins, and I need 1 in.). How can I make Word's text-entry as Vim-like as possible?

bb010g

Posted 2011-12-14T02:08:01.280

Reputation: 543

8Wow. Just wow. +1 for this poor, lost Linux soul. I hope he finds his way back home. – Joshua – 2011-12-14T02:48:48.587

(ok ok, I kid you maybe a little ;) ) – Joshua – 2011-12-14T02:49:12.220

@bb010g: so all you want to fix is how the text from within vim is printed? – akira – 2011-12-14T09:16:33.840

@akira That would work: I just need custom font, margins, bolding, emphasis, and line spacing. (Markdown compatibility would be a plus.) Compatibility with Word isn't absolutely required. I would just use Vim, Markdown HTML export, and TextEdit to do some basic formatting, but TextEdit only does 1.25 in. margins, and I need 1 in. – bb010g – 2011-12-14T14:48:02.760

try this http://www.viemu.com/

– None – 2011-12-14T09:31:50.707

4Have you considered using LaTeX instead of Word? – Christian Mann – 2011-12-15T05:17:02.960

LaTeX, thought I'm not familiar. :p – Kjuly – 2011-12-15T06:07:59.760

@Oops is that really working on osx? – tidbeck – 2011-12-15T10:35:00.553

so you want live in both world : paradise and hell ? It's not possible – Dzung Nguyen – 2011-12-21T02:53:10.000

Answers

If you really just need the 1" margins, follow @tonyk's advice: write in markdown, use pandoc to convert to ODT or RTF and open in Word or LibreOffice. Sure, LibreOffice is bleh, but it isn't bad if you are just using it to tweak final formatting.

Or just use pandoc's markdown2pdf to convert to PDF, and use a custom latex template with \usepackage[margin=1in]{geometry} in the preamble.

If you really want to use Word 2011 but make it feel like vim, you might try Quickcursor. Not sure what happens when things get complex, but should work with simple text.

dsanson

Posted 2011-12-14T02:08:01.280

Reputation: 46

One option would be to write your documents in Markdown, then use Pandoc to convert it to ODT, which you should be able to open and style in Word 2011.

tonyk

Posted 2011-12-14T02:08:01.280

Reputation: 111

KeyRemap4MacBook has four different vi "modes" that you can turn on to get some vi bindings in most applications. They each support different bindings (but are all basic compared to a real MacVIM/VIM editor). You can see the different bindings here. I personally use "Ubiquitous VIM Mode" on occasion to get Normal Mode commands like dd, dw, yy, etc.

Also, I haven't personally tried it, but viWord promises the basics using a Word template.

Note that ViEmu (someone listed it in the comments) is not available for the Mac.

studgeek

Posted 2011-12-14T02:08:01.280

Reputation: 1 805

The cross references below are also informative:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/586355/vim-for-word-or-something-like-it?answertab=votes#tab-top

and

https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/5s0kxh/word_processor_with_vimlike_shortcuts/

tigr

Posted 2011-12-14T02:08:01.280

Reputation: 79

1Just links to external content would be more appropriate as a comment. Link-only answers tend to attract downvotes. – fixer1234 – 2018-12-29T06:52:38.730

just no........ – vwvan – 2019-11-20T06:48:54.497