Updating Some Vim Tools
Today I decided that I wanted to see what was out there to update MacVim to be something more like Sublime Text 2 - or at least how I use it. Since starting at The Shop, I've come to really like the project-management features in Sublime Text 2 - specifically the ability to find a file with partial filename completion, and the same thing for methods/functions, as working in Ruby has shown me that the standard way of working on Ruby projects is to have a mess of files, all no bigger than a thimble.
But I had a feeling that there had to be something like this for Vim - and therefore MacVim, which I really like - but just need this kind of help with. So I asked my most Vim-savvy friend and he mentioned CtrlP.
Install this guy and a simple Ctrl-P brings up a searchable list - just like Sublime Text 2! This is directory-specific and includes most-recently-used files and buffers as well. It's a real treat. It's fast, clean, and does exactly what I need it to do. I've never heard of it, but it's really quite amazing.
The next real jewel today is VimClojure. This gives me the clojure syntax-highlighting and indenting that I really need to write in clojure in Vim. I'm doing about 90% of my coding in clojure these days, and the lack of a good default mode and syntax highlight for clojure is really something that kept me from really even starting to write clojure in Vim. With this, I'm golden.
I'm super happy with these two, but I really wish MacVim had the save/restore that other Mac apps have for windows and files. The ability to save and restore the state would be amazing and might make it so that I'm back to MacVim all the time. Sublime Text 2 is nice, and I've played briefly with Sublime Text 3 beta, but there's something about Vim and all the history I have with it that makes it exceptionally powerful for me.
I'll keep looking, and these plugins make Vim much nicer, but I'm not yet giving up on Sublime Text 2 - yet.