First of all. This is not another "how do I exit vim?" shitpost.
I've been using (neo)vim for about two years and I started to notice, that I,m basically unable to use non-vim editors. I do not code a lot, but I write a lot of markown. I'd like to use dedicated tools for this, but their vim emulators are so bad. So I'm now stuck with my customized neovim, devoid of any hope of abandoning this strange addiction.
Any help or advice?
The trick is do the opposite, namely bring vim everywhere, e.g using Tridactyl you can bring some behaviors to the browser and, in this very textarea from lemmy, if I press Ctrl+i I get gvim, when I exit it, the content is back in the textarea and I can reply. Vim everywhere.
Build a small EMP device. Figure out how to trigger it from terminal. Delete the key bindings for vim. Map them to the trigger you have for the EMP.
… good luck..?
Switch to GUI editors with Word-like navigation. You will struggle but eventually your vim habits will fade away and then you will be able to use any editor with slightly various levels of performance.
Do you just need to write markdown? Plenty of text editors have a vim mode. Not sure if there's any lightweight ones that do the markdown preview alongside a vim mode; I know IntelliJ-based IDEs have a vim mode and can preview markdown, but that's not exactly a lightweight solution, and only the community edition is open source.
But also what exactly is it you're looking for that Vim can't do? I use Vim for writing pretty much everything. I use Vim for markdown and it works fine. Markdown is already pretty readable as a text file so I don't feel the need for a previewer or anything like a rich text editor (but also there are plenty of markdown editors out there if you just want to edit markdown in a RTE).
Make a plugin to a non-vim editor that properly emulates the vim experience, with the non-vim GUI.
Or, if that doesn't work well enough, fork them.
Failing that, you could just accept your fate. I love my neovim install.
I don't know understand why you need markdown, but if you are so used to vim motions why not switch to latex instead. You wouldn't have to worry about katex support as well. This is an advice solely based on your need for katex support without understanding your needs.
Just switch to VSCode or something similar, it has enough features and shortcuts that will quickly make you like at least 80% as productive as you were in Vim. It even has a Vim mode so you can wean yourself off of it more easily.
Honestly never got the appeal of Vim, you need to spend so much time learning and configuring it only to squeeze out a little bit of extra productivity out of it when compared to a "normal" editor/IDE. I don't see why it's so important to be able to edit and write code as quickly as possible since most of the time you're going to be debugging or looking at the code or reading docs.
EDIT: Just noticed you said you don't code a lot. I think most of what I said still applies, I imagine you don't spend 99% of the time in the editor typing away.
I used to use Sublime for notes and then VSCode and those types of text editors work just fine for non code stuff imo. VSCode even has syntax highlighting for Markdown so could be a plus for OP.
I haven't measured it, but I can tell I'm noticably slower on standard editors than Vim.
Eh I've seen colleagues that use Vim heavily do their work and they're like at best 10-20% faster than me when it comes to pure text input/editing, honestly not worth the effort to switch to Vim for me.
To your "never got the appeal".
Ngl for me using vim is the only option. If something needs to be done using a mouse, it's just not going to be done. I can't aim properly due to problems with my arms, and it itches something in my brain everytime I try, it makes me literally furious and enraged.
I tried using zed, but quickly found out that I can only control the text field with motions, nothing else.
If I try using mouse, speed of anything I do gets multiplied by 0.1.
Thanks to vim, I'm able to work with loads of text at all.
Simple as that.
i just use vim plugins in the other editors i use.
kate has a vim mode,
vs code has a vim plugin.
intellij has a vim plugin.
obsidian has a vim mode.
a lot of editors have vim modes.if you have a current non vim markdown editor,
try looking for a vim mode.if you dont, obsidian is all about markdown,
and vs code has a markdown preview plugin.
