writing tools

Abhijit Nadgouda over at iface thoughts describes a method of using vim as a simple wiki system, utilizing its built-in “tags” capability.

One thing I have learnt from experience is that the tool to collect and organize our information must be easily available and easy to use. And that is where vim scores higher than any other tool to build a wiki.[…]

Nowadays I use the vim as a combination of wiki and outliner to record my ideas and thoughts, documentation, tasks and even contacts.

Looks very easy to set up and use — I think I’ll give it a try.

A couple of days ago, Slashdot posted a story asking about “(Useful) Stupid Unix Tricks?”:

So the other day I messaged another admin from the console using the regular old ‘write’ command (as I’ve been doing for over 10 years). To my surprise he didn’t know how to respond back to me (he had to call me on the phone) and had never even known you could do that. That got me thinking that there’s probably lots of things like that, and likely things I’ve never heard of. What sorts of things do you take for granted as a natural part of Unix that other people are surprised at?

It’s perhaps unsurprising that there have been over 2200 comments exploring the arcana of the Unix and Unixy command line. A lot of awesome lore to check out.

Yesterday came the next story, “(Useful) Stupid Vim Tricks?”:

I thoroughly enjoyed the recent post about Unix tricks, so I ask Slashdot vim users, what’s out there? :Sex, :b#, marks, ctags. Any tricks worth sharing?

570+ comments later, there’s a lot to check out there as well.

Today’s post was inevitable, “(Stupid) Useful Emacs Tricks?”:

Since the Vi version of this question was both interesting and popular, let’s hear from the other end of the spectrum. What are your favorite tricks, macros, extensions, and techniques for any of the various Emacs? Myself, I like ‘M-x dunnet’ ;-)

200 comments and counting.

One of the most enjoyable parts of the Vim story, apart from the various spiffy command tips and tricks, were links to other sites. Here are a couple, along with a few related others I’ve linked to before.

• Best Vim Tips (Wikia) (at the Vim Tips Wiki)
• Efficient Editing With vim
• GTD with Vim
• Vimperator - Firefox add-on that makes the browser look and feel like vim.
• Word War vi - “A retro styled side scrolling shoot’em up arcade game for linux. Your mission is to traverse core memory and rid the host of emacs.” (See my followup post “Compiling Word War vi on Mac OS X”.)
• 7 Habits For Effective Text Editing 2.0 - Bram Moolenaar on Google Video. (PDF of the presentation.)

A pair of stories on /. today hold a particular fascination for me, particularly when taken together:

“Linux Desktop Distro Shootout”

“War Brewing on the Inexpensive Laptop Front”

They point to a pair of stories:

Infoweek: “Linux Shootout: 7 Desktop Distros Compared”.

We tested openSUSE, Ubuntu 8.04, PCLinuxOS, Mandriva Linux One, Fedora, SimplyMEPIS, and CentOS 5.1. All performed well, and each had at least one truly outstanding feature.

(At the moment, I am veering toward Kubuntu.)

And The Christian Science Monitor: “More computer brands chase the ‘$100 laptop’”.

Bye bye, bulk. New lines of tiny PCs fit both in your purse and into third-world classrooms.

Taken together, I can see my near-future computing needs handled, particularly on the writing front.

From Fletcher Penny: “Using MultiMarkdown with Scrivener”

This document assumes a basic familiarity with Scrivener, and with MultiMarkdown. It is designed to help you combine the two programs into a system to help you with the writing process, as well as the printing and publishing process.

It will guide you through the process of setting up a document that will be compatible with exporting to MultiMarkdown.

I’ve been taking a look at Scrivener again of late — I waver back and forth about using it for my next book, but I’m leaning toward it at the moment.

(In case you don’t know, Fletcher is the one who expanded on John Gruber’s Markdown by creating the spiffy MultiMarkdown. Thanks Fletcher!)

Back in the days of NeXT, there was a bundled application called Digital Librarian. And as AppleInsider describes in this article, “Road to Mac OS X Leopard: Dictionary 2.0”,

Included with the system were the complete works of Shakespeare, The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Thesaurus.

With the new Dictionary.app, you have the ability to view other dictionaries, as well as all of Wikipedia — I’ve already been using this capability a ton. Combined with using the keyboard shortcuts under the “Search” menu, searching multiple places is very easy and quick.

An item that might go overlooked is in the “Go” menu — “Front/Back Matter.” Choosing that while the Dictionary is selected reveals various meta items like the people associated with making the included New Oxford American Dictionary, prefaces, introductions, etc. But there’s actually a massive amount of additional resources here. Check it out:

• American Voices by William A.Kretzschmar, Jr.
• How to Read an Etymology by Anatoly Liberman
• Key to the Pronunciations
• Key to the Abbreviations

Ready Reference

• Language Guide
  • Rules of English: Understanding Grammar
  • Guide to Spelling
  • Guide to Capitalization and Punctuation
  • Words: Making the Right Choices
  • Clichés
  • Proofreader’s Marks
• The History of English
  • Timeline
• States of the United States of America
• Presidents of the United States of America
• Declaration of Independence
• Constitution of the United States of America
• Countries of the World
• Chemical Elements
• Standard Weights and Measures with Metric Equivalents and Conversions
• Metric Weights and Measures with Standard Equivalents and Conversions
• Alphabets

Of course, in our always-online culture nowadays, all of this stuff is available via your favorite web browser. But if you happen to be offline (horror of horrors), these could be very useful.