v

• commands, vim9 script from this decade and a base color palette

  Vim modes

  Vim's considered a modal editor in the sense that its both modular by design and implementation. This means that it provides multiple modes and the meaning of keys changes according to the mode. You navigate files in normal mode, insert text in insert mode, select lines in visual mode; You also access commands in command-line mode and so on. Its really an amalgamation of modal languages w/ its own scripting language that defines the user-level API.

  Command line modes

  Ex (short for extended) is a panel (i refer to each mode as a panel) that operates on entire files, buffers, or settings.. In vim you can enter ex-mode : which'll run the ex commands. / Search prompt (which is a common feature in many other unix programs) is another panel that adds a layer to the already multilanguage accredited syntax of vim, and allows you to search using ERE, BRE and PCRE... If that wasnt enough, you also have Quickfix which is your own personal jump-error/search panel to jump between different error locations in a file, post-execution of :make, you do :copen. You can also open the terminal (w/ the configured terminal emulator from your shell) and run ./My-Build-Release-Program or whatever your program is called.

  Conceptualizing Vim

  I like to imagine it in the same way i imagine rotating 3x3 X-O Panels at my local playground; Like curved triangles w/ qwerty layouts on each surface; Rotations of a panel represents changes - When you spin a panel's face you reveal a new mode. Speaking of modes, another tangentially-related concept are the operators and motions. Operators start a certain action, e.g. changing, removing, or selecting text. Afterwards you specify the region of text you want to act on w/ a motion.

  Limitations and Extensibility

  Vim is not without its limits. One thing it was never meant to do was string together long chains of builtin commands. Also, many of the things that we do w/ text editors today didnt exist at that early time Vi/Vim was made, and it was specifically designed to have low resource usage—so its core engine is not as dynamic as it could be. Even still, its an ever-evolving program w/ extensions/forks and plugins. Consequently the user decides what Vim is and may extend it to their hearts desire.