Editing MDN with VIM

Posted by on 02 Mar 2012 Go to original comments

UPDATED: New screenshot with html filetype! Thanks Screwtape for the tip in the comments!

Yes, it's possible! If you're like me you want to spend as much time in vim as possible. While I appreciate CKEditor on MDN, I personally prefer to edit text in vim, and I think many developers might agree. And since MDN should include content written by developers for developers, here's a way to edit your favorite web developer docs (that would be MDN), using vim. (In my case, MacVim)
It's All Text Preferences

  1. Install the It's All Text Firefox addon.
  2. Go to the IAT preferences
  3. set your editor to vim (MacVim.app in my case)
  4. set your hotkey. (alt+command+e in my case, now that I'm used to Firefox Dev Tools "Inspect" and "Console" keyboard hotkeys)
  5. Go to the MDN article you want to edit. (Apps/Getting Started in my case)
  6. Click Edit (duh)
  7. Click Source
  8. Type your hotkey!
  9. Drink beer and edit away!*
  10. :wq

* groovecoder is not responsible for whatever Sheppy might do to you if you actually edit MDN while intoxicated.

MacVim Quite on CloseNote: For MacVim you may need to set the "After last window closes: Quit MacVim" preference so it puts you right back to Firefox when you :wq.

Apps/Getting Started in vim

Question or comment about this post? Tell me on GitHub.

Editing MDN with VIM / groovecoder by groovecoder is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA
mdn dev
  1. Screwtape 2012-03-03 00:43:36 -0600
    Looks like you should also add to your .vimrc: autocmd BufNewFile,BufRead developer.mozilla.org.*.txt setlocal filetype=html (assuming that 'html' is the most appropriate filetype for Deki's wiki markup; it looks like raw HTML in that screenshot, but if not, you can probably find or create a more appropriate filetype plugin)
  2. groovecoder 2012-03-04 09:24:17 -0600
    Great tip! updated screenshot!
  3. Rod Knowlton 2012-04-17 16:04:39 -0500
    Ha! I googled for the autocmd you told me about at the Hackathon, and this is where I found it!
Editing MDN with VIM / groovecoder by groovecoder is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA