Vim Motions

One of the more frequent admonishments delivered on #vim to the whining novice or the curious journeyman is to master the many motions within the editor. Previously, a bewildering list of punctuation and jumbled letters was unceremoniously dumped on the complainant with the misguided expectation that they'd then take themselves off and get right to the task of memorising the eighty odd glyphs. We mistook their silence for compliance but I rather suspect it was more bewilderment or repulsion or sheer paralysis. In an attempt to friendly that mess up, I have started an infographic series intended to cover the twelve major categories, probably spread over six separate infographics.

The Vim Motions Infographic Series (in 9 parts):

1. Line & Buffer
2. Column
3. Word
4. Find
5. Search
6. Large Objects
7. Marks, Matches & Folds
8. Text Objects (not motions, but mesh nicely at this point)
9. Creating your own Text Objects

I plan to have a different expression on the chibi's face in each of the pages. I'll move the crying one from the Large Object page (as shown below) to page 1 and then progressively improve her mood through the remaining pages: something like -- crying, disappointment, resignation, hope, amazement, happiness, confidence, smugness and something devilish. As an update on that, I have inked five of the chibis now. I look forward to having them all up in their own infographics.

I decided to have the background colour change to suit the mood of the chibi, starting from black in image number one to represent depression and despair. I will roughly follow the same colour spread I used on the How Do I Feel graphic.

I have no experience in putting together a multi-page piece like this. Feedback certainly welcome. I was vaguely thinking of having it a bit like a magazine or comic book spread, but I don't know how to do that or whether it's the right or even a good approach.


Legend:
Green indicates cursor origin before issuing the motion.
Red indicates cursor destination at the end of the motion.
Orange shows the area covered by the motion. This would be the same area highlighted in Vim if a visual operator was used with these motions.

1. Line & Buffer Motions

2. Column Motions

 
6. Large Object Motions

The Many Faces of % in Vim

Pity the poor Vimmer for he has so many a face to put to percent:

Help Topic	Description
N%	go to {count} percentage in the file
%	match corresponding [({})] (enhanced with matchit.vim plugin)
g%	enhanced match with matchit.vim plugin — cycle backwards through matches
:%	as a range, equal to :1,$ (whole file)
:_%	used as an argument to an :ex command as the name of the current file
"%	as a register, the name of the current file
expr-%	in VimL as modulo operator
expand(), printf() and bufname()	in VimL use % in printf-like format specifiers
'grepformat', 'errorformat', 'shellredir', 'printheader' and 'statusline'	various options use % as a printf-like format specifier
Regular Expression Atoms:
Match locations:
\%#	cursor position
\%'	position of a mark
\%l	specific line
\%c	specific column
\%v	specific virtual column
\%(	non-backref capturing group
\%[	sequence of optionally matched atoms
Numeric character specifier in matches:
\%d	decimal
\%o	octal
\%x	hex (2 digits)
\%u	hex (4 digits)
\%U	hex (8 digits)
Absolute file or string boundaries:
\%^	start of file (or start of string)
\%$	end of file (or end of string)
\%V	match inside visual area

Vim's Pipes