FrogBlog

For a long time I had problems finding a way to organize arbitrary snippets of information on my computer. I tried several things from simply storing arbitrary text files in the normal directory structure to trying out various note-kepping programs. I even considered writing one of my own.

Several weeks ago I finally found the ideal solution for me — at least from my current experience it seems to be the ideal solution: Viki. This is a vim script that adds wiki functionality to vim.

Now I can keep my notes semi-structured (i.e. cross-referenced) — and my todo list. I even started organizing my web browser bookmarks with Viki (you can invoke an external link in your web browser from within vim with the Viki scripts).

I also use Mercurial to put my notes in a revision control system. This allows me to easily distribute my notes across different computers and keeping them in sync (with the side-effect to get light-weight backups).

I am long-time vim user. For some years I also use a Mac. Last year I discovered the MacVim project. This is a Cocoa based GUI to vim (so far there was only gvim on the Mac, a Carbon based GUI).

The Carbon gvim is not that great so I sticked to the console vim version. But with the new MacVim, I now have a GUI vim that not only looks much better but also has additional features:

• It has a fullscreen mode.
• Vim’s tab feature uses real tabs instead of ASCII-art tabs.
• There is an ODB input manager that adds an “Edit in MacVim” menu entry to all applications (see Edit in SubEthaEdit for the principle).

There are probably other things, but those are the three I really like. With the “Edit in MacVim” feature, I can now easily write my mails from Apple Mail in vim. Unfortunately, the feature does not work for me in Camino.