Vim as XML Editor: About

Key sequences to be entered in Vim are written like this: 2 G [ctrl-v] [down] x. All commands are to be entered in normal mode. Insert mode commands start with an i, command line ones start with a :. Longer commands that are to be entered in Vim's command line are written like this:

:'<,'>s/<span\_s\+class="bold">\(\_.\{-}\)<\/span>/<em>\1<\/em>/g

Code that's to be entered in the shell of the OS most often is listed like this:

$ cd foo

The prompt character $ may indicate that the command is Linux-specific, and a > before a command may mean that the command is Windows-specific (to be entered in the "MS-DOS Prompt"). If there is no prompt character the command should work on at least both OSs.

"Linux" most often stands for Unix-like systems such as GNU/Linux, BSD, etc.

If you want additional features you might have to compile Vim yourself, check the README and INSTALL files. Here's a shortened version of how I installed it (after having resolved some dependencies such as termcap, ncurses-devel, XFree86-devel, pkgconfig).

$ wget -q \
> ftp://ftp.de.vim.org/unix/vim-6.3.tar.bz2
$ tar -xjf vim-6.3.tar.bz2
$ cd vim63/
$ ./configure \
> --prefix=$HOME/bulk/run/vim/6_3 \
> --with-features=big \
> --enable-gui=gtk2 \
> --with-compiledby='tobiasreif pinkjuice com' \
> --enable-rubyinterp \
> 2>&1 | tee > config.log
$ make 2>&1 | tee > make.log
$ make test 2>&1 | tee > test.log
$ make install 2>&1 | tee > install.log
$ ed
a
#!/usr/bin/env sh
${HOME}/bulk/run/vim/6_3/bin/vim "$@"
.
w /home/tobi/data/commands/vim
56
q
$ ed
a
#!/usr/bin/env sh
${HOME}/bulk/run/vim/6_3/bin/gvim "$@"
.
w /home/tobi/data/commands/gvim
57
q
$ chmod 700 ~/data/commands/vim
$ chmod 700 ~/data/commands/gvim
$ vim --version | head -n 3
VIM - Vi IMproved 6.3 (2004 June 7, compiled Jun 10 2004 15:19:15)
Compiled by tobiasreif pinkjuice com
Big version with GTK2 GUI.  Features included (+) or not (-):
$ ed ~/.bashrc
256
/EDITOR/
export EDITOR='/usr/bin/vim'
s/'.\+$/'\/home\/tobi\/data\/commands\/vim'/p
export EDITOR='/home/tobi/data/commands/vim'
wq
272
$ rpm -v --test --erase gvim
$ rpm -v --test --erase kvim
$ su root
Password:
# rpm -v --erase gvim
# rpm -v --erase kvim
# rpm -v --test --erase vim
# rpm -v --erase vim
# SuSEconfig
# exit
$ ed ~/.bashrc
272
a
MANPATH=$HOME/bulk/run/vim/6_3/man:$MANPATH
export MANPATH

.
wq
332
$ source ~/.bashrc
$ man vim
Reformatting vim(1), please wait...

Then I made vim available to root:

$ su -
Password:
# vim
-bash: vim: command not found
# ed .bashrc
16
a

alias vim='/home/tobi/bulk/run/vim/6_3/bin/vim'

.
wq
66
# vim
-bash: vim: command not found
# source .bashrc
# vim
# exit
logout
$

TMTOWTDI.

There are many different ways to install software on Linux. For some tools I describe how I installed them, but those are just examples; you'll most likely have different preferences and a different environment. I guess one typical strategy would be:

1. Ask your package manager, try it on the command line: Is the tool already installed? Is it up to date?

2. Otherwise check if there's a sufficiently recent package (eg .deb or .rpm) supplied by your distro project or vendor...

3. ... or by the project itself ...

4. ... or by a third party, if you trust it. In this and the former case it makes sense to check if there's a package specifically for your distro and -version.

5. Otherwise you could get the source from the project web site then compile and install via some variation of the common ./configure;make;make install command sequence . If you don't want to risk conflicts caused by systemwide installation you can install the tool as user somewhere under your home directory, by omitting make install or by overriding the default installation directory.

6. Or the project might provide a binary for your platform.

The online version is generated by a set of XSLTs I have written (they are not a customization layer for an existing package). The files are listed for the curious; they are not published as supported releases. You're free to use the XSLTs, but you're on your own :). I wrote them to get the kind of XHTML I like. Ideally it should be

purely structural

no presentational markup

used appropriately

regarding semantics and structure (no tables except for tabular data, etc)

valid XHTML 1.0 Strict

not so difficult, since I only use a subset of DocBook

accessible

implementing many but not all WAI guidelines (WCAG 1.0)

Please drop me a line if you experience any problems.

Here are the XSLT files used to generate the online version of this howto. They work well for me, but they are

• very incomplete,
• not general or flexible enough,
• and quirky to set up and run,

so I don't recommend to use them.