[trying neovim]

Points of Learning

The following article touches on these technical skills:

• installing binaries and moving them around on your system
• learn the basics of vim motions
• gain exposure to find and replace methods in nvim
• install a precustomized nvim version, NvChad

Preparing the Thumbnail

As I was drafting out this post, I was preparing a thumbnail for it (ai). During which I noticed the image for my home page on this website was 1mb in size. Way to large for a simple blog thumbnail. So, I resized it using Image Resizer and I got to thinking, "I bet a command line utility for this exists."

I got this image size down from 1mb to 7kb. The images in the thumbnails on this site are 150x150px and I have no intention of scaling them over time.

NOTE TO SELF: Find a command line utility to resize images on the fly.

My Experience With Nvim

I know the basics. I am not an expert on the key maps or anything but I have a general idea of how it works. I know you can do all your config in lua. I don't really know lua, but I know it is loosely typed so we are good.

I gave nvim a good go around a year or so ago, but I think it might be time for another stab. The main reason is I just want to run something more lightweight on my desktop. Sometimes she can't keep up 😅.

That, and honestly, the amount of die-hard vim users is curious to me. Am I missing something? Plus, I get a chance to look a little bit closer at a well-known software. Here we go.

Installation

I found installing a bit of a pain as version as version 0.7.2 was installed by default on WSL when running:

1sudo apt-get install neovim

Let's uninstall, update, and reinstall:

1sudo apt-get remove neovim
2sudo apt-get update
3sudo apt-get upgrade
4sudo apt-get install neovim

Still getting 0.7.2..

Found this post on reddit and tried this:

1sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
2sudo add-apt-repository ppa:neovim-ppa/stable
3sudo apt-get update
4sudo apt-get install neovim
5nvim -v

Still getting 0.7.2..

Building From Source

I can build from source on the nvim release page.

I ended up doing:

1wget https://github.com/neovim/neovim/releases/download/v0.10.2/nvim-linux64.tar.gz
2tar -xvzf nvim-linux64.tar.gz
3mv nvim-linux64 nvim

I am not 100% sure where this needs to go on my system. I know neovim is config-heavy so I want to be sure I set this up right.

...

Okay I see /usr/bin and ~/.config/nvim might be options?

/usr/bin makes the most sense lets try it:

1mv nvim /usr/bin
2nvim

Now, nvim was an installation directory, so it has the actual binary within. I had issues getting it to work unless I kept the nvim directory within /usr/bin.

/usr/bin normally has all of your system binaries, so having a directory in there feels a little off.

I ended up having to change /usr/bin/nvim to /usr/bin/nvim-dir and adding /usr/bin/nvim-dir/bin to my PATH as a solution.

Now we are on version 0.10.2 😀

Plugins

We gotta get some plugins installed. A little research and I found that package manager lazy.nvim.

I went ahead and followed the docs to setup some basic configuration I stashed in this repo.

That repo might change as I find my favorite custom config.

The LSP

At this point in the post, I swapped from vscode to neovim.

I think the plugin I am most concerned about getting up and running is my LSP support. I am going to do some research and see what I can find.

I found this page in the neovim docs. It looks like language servers are installed using a package manager.

I checked out this page where I see we can go through the process of install language severs one-by-one, but I think a better way might be out there.

I found this repo which is maintained and looks promising. We still manage installing servers, but this makes it easy to get them working in our projects.

I already have gopls installed, so I'll just try to get it working with that.

Adding this line to ~/.config/nvim/init.lua:

1require'lspconfig'.gopls.setup{}

NvChad

After digging around with LSP details and a few other plugins, I decided it would be best to use a drop in configuration with good defaults. I decided to go with NvChad which has super easy installation instructions.

It has good defaults and I think it'll work for the time being.

I got it up and running and it is doing fine. I have not had any issues so far and was able to change over my theme.

Getting Around

I am going to spend a little bit of time learning how to getting around in neovim. I am already confident in things like insert mode. For selecting, I am just using the mouse. But I know select mode is a thing. Just going to dive in and look for the most useful things to know.

Here is an entry from Claude:

I'll share the most crucial Vim navigation skills that will dramatically improve your text editing efficiency:

Basic Movement Keys:

• h, j, k, l are your fundamental movement keys
  • h: Move left
  • j: Move down
  • k: Move up
  • l: Move right

Word-Based Movement:

• w: Move forward to the start of the next word
• b: Move backward to the start of the previous word
• e: Move to the end of the current word
• W, B, E: Similar to w, b, e, but move by WORD (ignore punctuation)

Line Movement:

• 0: Jump to the start of the line
• $: Jump to the end of the line
• ^: Jump to the first non-blank character of the line

Screen Movement:

• Ctrl + f: Page down
• Ctrl + b: Page up
• H: Move to the top of the screen
• M: Move to the middle of the screen
• L: Move to the bottom of the screen

Advanced Movement:

• gg: Go to the first line of the document
• G: Go to the last line of the document
• {number}G: Go to a specific line number

Search Movement:

• /{pattern}: Search forward for a pattern
• ?{pattern}: Search backward for a pattern
• n: Repeat the last search forward
• N: Repeat the last search backward

Quick Jumps:

• (: Move to the start of the previous sentence
• ): Move to the start of the next sentence
• {: Move to the previous paragraph
• }: Move to the next paragraph

Pro Tips:

1. Combine movement with numbers for faster navigation (e.g., 5j moves 5 lines down)
2. Use these movements with operators like d (delete) or c (change) for powerful editing
3. Practice these until they become muscle memory

Bonus Tip: Use vimtutor in your terminal for an interactive tutorial that will help you master these skills quickly!

Would you like me to elaborate on any of these navigation techniques?

Find and Replace

Then, I questioned Calude about how to easily find and replace text within a document using nvim. Here is the response:

I'll cover find and replace in Vim, which is extremely powerful:

Basic Find and Replace:

1. Within a single line:

• s/old/new: Replace first occurrence
• s/old/new/g: Replace all occurrences on current line

2. Global Find and Replace:

• :%s/old/new: Replace first occurrence in entire file
• :%s/old/new/g: Replace ALL occurrences in entire file
• :%s/old/new/gc: Replace with confirmation prompt before each replacement

Advanced Options:

• :%s/old/new/gi: Case-insensitive replacement

• :%s/old/new/gI: Case-sensitive replacement

• `:%s/<old## Points of learning
  The following article touches on these technical skills:

• installing binaries and moving them around on your system

• learn the basics of vim motions

• gain exposure to find and replace methods in nvim

• install a precustomized nvim version, NvChad>/new/g`: Whole word replacement (matches 'old' exactly)

Regex Power:

• Use regex for complex replacements
• :%s/\v(pattern1)(pattern2)/\2\1/g: Swap patterns
• :%s/\v(\d+)/number: \1/g: Add prefix to numbers

Special Characters:

• \n: Newline in replacement
• \r: Carriage return
• \t: Tab

Scoped Replacements:

• :10,20s/old/new/g: Replace between lines 10-20
• :'<,'>s/old/new/g: Replace in visual selection

Pro Tips:

• Always use /g to replace all occurrences
• Use confirmation mode gc when making significant changes
• Practice regex for complex replacements

Want me to elaborate on any of these techniques?

Combining Commands

I think reading this post on StackExchange really helped me to 'get the point' a little bit more. I was trying to taking this post and run it through AI for a spellcheck when I realized I didn't know how to do that in nvim.

So, in that post we see ggVG is the combination of commands to select all the text in a file. It doesn't feel intuitive, but man does it feel cool 😎.

I think my favorite commands are / and ? for searching forwards and backwards in a file. Instead of using my keyboard to move my cursor around the file, I notice it is way quicker to spot where you want to go, and then to search jump there using / or ? depending if you are moving forwards or backwards in the file based on your current cursor position.

I think this is where nvim shines. It's ability to allow you to quickly jump around a file without having to use the mouse is really the point.

For example, let's say I want to grab this current block of text. Mind you, this is off the dome, I did not reaseach this bit I am just rolling here.

Okay, that block right there ^, lets copy it real quick. I'm thinking we do ?For example to jump back in the file to the start of the block. Then we enter visual mode using v. Then we can run /here. to jump to the end of the line. Now that I say that out loud I know you can also run $ to go to the end of the line. Then you can yank the line using y.

So, you have the ability to on the fly combine commands to avoid using the mouse and that is an example of how we can do it. I think that is the point of nvim.

Conclusion

I do think getting around the document can be more effcient with nvim. I think it really boils down to taking the time to learn the mappings and then just forcing yourself to use the editor for a period of time. I think that is probably what I will commit to to give it a fair shake.

Setting things up can be time-consuming, but it is a good process if you are wanting to learn more about computers in general. For me, I don't think taking the time to get the most pristine customization is really where my time is best suited, so I opted in for a precustomized-install.

I did learn more about LSP's and it did make me interested in what it would look like to design my own LSP.

I was recently working on GTML and it has been the closest thing to make getting into compilers and interpreters. My lack of understanding of LSP's did limit my creative potential in that project.

NOTE TO SELF: Did you learn how LSPs work?

After

All my notes I take on this topic will go here.

Dropping Buffers

I found it was annoying when I was using telescope to open up new files in vim because tons of them would collect. You can run :bd to drop the current buffer. This is useful.

Shifting Blocks of Text

I noticed it you could not indent blocks of text by using tab. So, I did a little research and learned you can use SELECT mode to highlight a block of text and then use < or > to shift things.

Changing the Current Word

I always find myself doing CRTL+BACKSPACE to delete words in vscode. I learned you can run Bciw to change the inner word which is a vim command which more or less does the same thing.

Rust Analyzer

I found it was a little bit difficult to get rust-analyzer working with NvChad as it did not come preinstalled. However, I was able to get it up and running and here is the page where I found my solution.

Commenting Out Text

I discovered I could not use CTRL+/ to comment out a highlighted section of text. NvChad comes with the ability to use gc to comment out blocks of text instead.

Jumping to End of Line in Insert Mode

Bruh, A brings you to the end of the line in insert mode. I've been doing $i my gosh.