1. Introduction

This document will cover the console version of vim from Debian stable. Although much of what is discussed here will also apply to gvim, it may or may not work with gvim.

Learning vim can be a bit of a trial but it is well worth it in the long run. The most important thing you can do is read the section Vim's built in help. Once you figure out how to use vim's built-in help effectively, you'll learn vim much more comfortably.

No introduction to vim would be complete without a warning. Vim is not a difficult editor to learn but it won't be like any other editor you've used. In the beginning you'll find that the movement and editing commands can be quite irritating. However, with a bit of patience and perseverance you will become quite adept at using it.

If it is so irritating why would you want to learn how to use it? Good question. My primary motivation to learn vim was watching someone who was good with vim edit a configuration file. Without moving his hands from the keyboard he cut large blocks of text and moved them around quite rapidly. This simple textual explanation just doesn't do justice to what I witnessed that day. Vim offers you the ability to rapidly search, edit, copy, and "read in" files in far less time then your average editor. Vim can also do things you just can't do in other editors. Once you get good enough, vim saves you a lot of time over conventional editors.

Before we move on to the next section I would like to pass on a couple quick tips.

	Beware the caps-lock key!
	Because vim uses the keyboard as a primary means of navigation, you need to make sure the caps-lock key is not depressed. If you're trying to move around in vim and strange things are happening, check to make sure the caps-lock key is not depressed.

Tapping the Escape key twice in quick succession will clear any commands you have begun to type incorrectly.