Question

I have been using MacVim & have gotten used to it but my main development computers are all Linux(Ubuntu)

I’d like MacVim like shortcuts and behavior

I know you can get windows like behavior like so

source $VIMRUNTIME/mswin.vim
behave mswin

how can I get Mac like behavior in GVIM on ubuntu?

Answer 1

I use MacVim on Mac OS X at work, GVim on Linux at home and CLI Vim everywhere. What do you call “MacVim like shortcuts and behavior”?

Do you mean “standard OS-wide shortcuts” like Cmd+O or Cmd+V or Shift+light/left arrow? I don’t know of any features MacVim has that GVim hasn’t beside a very elegant and impressive level of OS integration.

Shortcuts that use the Cmd key are obviously not supported because there is no Cmd key on a typical PC keyboard. If you really want to have them you will need to explicitly add them to your ~/.gvimrc with another modifier key. Shift+right/left arrow and other basic Mac OS X text-editing shortcuts must also be explicitly added to your ~/.gvimrc. You’ll quickly find limitations in this strategy.

Hell, GVim doesn’t even really support Gnome’s own default shortcuts anyway.

That’s the wrong approach.

Vim’s own commands, motions, text-objects and the grammar that ties them are a lot more efficient and portable. You should focus on that instead.

• Cmd+O = :e <Tab>
• Cmd+right arrow = $ for positioning the cursor or A to insert text
• Cmd+left arrow = ^ or 0 (0 is “first column’, ^ is “first printable character”) for positioning the cursor or I to insert text
• Alt+right arrow = e or E or w or W
• Alt+left arrow = b or B
• Shift+right arrow = v$
• Shift+left arrow = v^
• Shift+Alt+right arrow = ve then eee as many times as necessary or v2e

and so on…

Like I’ve said before, read :help motion.txt, it will blow your mind.