Hacking VIM : a cookbook to get the most out of the latest Vim editor ; from personalizing Vim to productivity optimizations: recipes to make life easier for experienced Vim users

This book is a concise and practical guide aimed at getting the results you want as quickly as possible. This book is for Java developers who want to create rich reports for either the web or print, and want to get started quickly with JasperReports to do this. No knowledge of JasperReports is presumed, although obviously familiarity with Java, SQL, and XML are assumed where they are required.

In Detail

Each chapter of this book deals with a different aspect, and provides recipes for easy-to-use hacks to customize and simplify your Vim experience. After an introduction covering the derivation of Vim and its relatives from the vi editor, the author explains basic changes that you can make to the appearance of the Vim editor. Further chapters cover improved navigation through files and buffers in Vim; speeding up your work with templates, auto-completion, folding, sessions, and registers; and formatting text and code, including using external formatting scripts. The final comprehensive chapter covers everything about using Vim scripts and scripting to extend functionality.

Vim stands for Vi IMproved and is the editor of choice for programmers looking for a highly configurable, stable, open-source, multi-platform text editor. It is included with almost every Linux distribution as the standard text editor, and can be used to work with source code from any language. A big advantage of using Vim is that it can be extensively customized; you can control the basic interface, define personalized key mappings, implement macros, and call external or user-defined scripts. Vim has its own scripting language that allows for plug-in like extensions to enable IDE behavior, syntax scripts and highlighting, color schemes, themes, and utility scripts that can add a wide range of features and functionality. Vim 7.0, for which this book is written, includes spell-checking, code completion, document tabs, current line and column highlighting, undo branches, and more.

This book contains hacks that cover everything from personalizing Vim according to the user's work cycle to optimizations that will boost the user's productivity. It does not cover the basic tasks of using the editor but instead focuses on making life easier for experienced Vim users. It is written for Vim 7.0 , the latest stable version.

Approach

This is a cookbook packed with ready-to-use hacks that give solutions for some of the commonest problems users of the Vim editor encounter during their daily use. Each recipe follows a systematic approach with a self-contained description of the task it covers, how to use it, and what you gain by using it. The reader can read any of the hacks in this book without having to read any of the other hacks, where necessary they include cross-references to other relevant hacks. The minimum version of Vim required for each hack is clearly indicated.

Who this book is for

It does not cover the basic tasks of using the editor but instead focuses on making life easier for more experienced Vim users.

Annotation Each chapter of this book deals with a different aspect, and provides recipes for easy-to-use hacks to customize and simplify your Vim experience. After an introduction covering the derivation of Vim and its relatives from the vi editor, the author explains basic changes that you can make to the appearance of the Vim editor. Further chapters cover improved navigation through files and buffers in Vim; speeding up your work with templates, auto-completion, folding, sessions, and registers; and formatting text and code, including using external formatting scripts. The final comprehensive chapter covers everything about using Vim scripts and scripting to extend functionality. Vim stands for Vi IMproved and is the editor of choice for programmers looking for a highly configurable, stable, open-source, multi-platform text editor. It is included with almost every Linux distribution as the standard text editor, and can be used to work with source code from any language. A big advantage of using Vim is that it can be extensively customized; you can control the basic interface, define personalized key mappings, implement macros, and call external or user-defined scripts. Vim has its own scripting language that allows for plug-in like extensions to enable IDE behavior, syntax scripts and highlighting, color schemes, themes, and utility scripts that can add a wide range of features and functionality. Vim 7.0, for which this book is written, includes spell-checking, code completion, document tabs, current line and column highlighting, undo branches, and more Annotation The book steers you through each point of report setup, to creating, designing, formatting, and exporting reports with data from a wide range of datasources, and integrating JasperReports with other Java frameworks. Starting with the basics of adding reporting capabilities to your application, and creating report templates you will first see how to produce your reports through the use of JRXML files, custom ANT targets, and then see preview them in both the browser and the native browser of JasperReports. Getting data into your reports is the next step, and you will see how to get data from a range of datasources, not only databases, but XML files, and Java Objects, among others. You will create better looking reports with formatting and grouping, as well as adding graphical elements to the report. You will export your reports to a range of different formats, including PDF and XML. Creating reports will be made even easier with a walkthrough of the iReport Designer visual designing tool. To round things off, you will see how to integrate your reports with other Java frameworks, using Spring or Hibernate to get data for the report, and Java Server Faces or Struts for presenting the report "JasperReports is the world's most popular embeddable Java open source reporting library, providing Java developers with the power to easily create rich print and web reports. This book shows you exactly how to get started, and develop the skills to get the most from JasperReports. The book steers you through each point of report setup, to creating, designing, formatting, and exporting reports with data from a wide range of datasources, and integrating JasperReports with other Java frameworks. Starting with the basics of adding reporting capabilities to your application, and creating report templates you will first see how to produce your reports through the use of JRXML files, custom ANT targets, and then see preview them in both the browser and the native browser of JasperReports"--Resource description page. This book contains hacks that cover everything from personalizing Vim according to the user's work cycle to optimizations that will boost the user's productivity. It does not cover the basic tasks of using the editor but instead focuses on making life easier for experienced Vim users. It is written for Vim 7.0, the latest stable version. Anyone who has worked with Vim and wants to get more out of this legendary text editor can use the hacks from this book. It does not cover the basic tasks of using the editor but instead focuses on making life easier for more experienced Vim users Concise, practical guidance introduces you to JasperReports, and gets you creating complex and elegant reports. This book is for Java developers who want to create rich reports for either the web or print, and want to get started quickly with JasperReports to do this. No knowledge of JasperReports is presumed, although obviously familiarity with Java, SQL, and XML are assumed where they are required.