I’m editing a few pages on a few sites today and realised that I didn’t have a proper text editor installed on my Mac desktop.
There is a text editor app, but it doesn’t have syntax highlighting, nor does it do a lot of the other funkier stuff that Vim does “out of the box”.
The silly thing is that a Google search for vim on osx (you can adjust the keywords to suit your taste) keeps taking me to this site, which doesn’t have a very recent version of vim. I’m sure their version is fine, but the installer is sadly lacking ie. you need to decompress files and move them around the place, whereas this sourceforge project is almost “sane”.
From Olivier Ansaldi:
Install MacPorts (http://www.macports.org/) and then:
port install vim-app
or:
port install vim
Happiness… at last
From Michele Neylon:
Olivier
Will MacPorts have any impact on the other software installed? eg. Firefox
Michele
From Olivier Ansaldi:
No. It lives in its own /opt/local directory away from everything else. MacPorts is a port system similar to the BSD one. It has a couple of small issues but I wouldn’t use a Mac without it!
From Olivier Ansaldi:
(just in case you missed my tweet!)
make sure to RTFM before installing MacPorts otherwise you’ll get it wrong and you’ll lose a lot of time. Key thing is you must install Xcode and X11 (app and sdk) from the OS/X dvd that came with your Mac before you install MacPorts.
Also, make sure to update Xcode to its latest (running Software Update will do the trick) otherwise some ports might have problems building.
From Brian Kenny:
Michele, the best editor I have seen to do this is TextMate. Absolutely brilliant.
You can even create a project, drag all your website into the project and begin editing.
Brian
From Colm MacCarthaigh:
Which release of OS X do you have? I can’t remember ever getting an osx mac that didn’t have vim pre-installed;
From Michele Neylon:
@Brian – I’ll have a look into that – thanks
@Colm – sorry. I should have specified. I was looking for something equivalent to gVIM ie. with a decent GUI
From Aidan Finn:
Whats the point of using vi if you want to use a gui;)
Vi, emacs, vim are all installed on OS X. You can run them from the command line. There is also an X-server included as an extra on the OS X cd (part of the developer tools). If the xserver is running you can get a gui version of emacs, vim etc. AFAIK the macports versions are similar to the included version: i.e. command-line unless you have an x-server running.
If you’re open to emacs you could try aquamacs. http://aquamacs.org/. Or if you’re willing to pay, Textmate is the business.
From Michele Neylon:
@Aidan
What can I say?
I’m awkward
I’ve downloaded a copy of TextMate and will give it a go tomorrow.
Michele
From Paul McCarthy:
I’d recommend Smultron. It’s easy to install, comes with syntax highlighting for almost every language you can think of, allows multiple tabs, and is Free. Full source code is available if you need it.
Smultron:
http://smultron.sourceforge.net/
From Michele Neylon:
@Paul
That looks nice. I might give it a go
Michele
From Patrick:
TextWrangler: GUI – syntax highlighting and everything you expect form an advanced text editor. Even has a command-line interface so you can launch it from a terminal session
http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/index.shtml
From Michele Neylon:
Patrick
Interesting ! I’m almost tempted to fire up my Mac laptop to give that a try
Michele
From howie:
Here’s the real MacVim: http://code.google.com/p/macvim/
Very good and 100% up to date.