Free WriteRoom for Vim Lovers
Date Posted: November 6th, 2009
Many of you may have heard of WriteRoom, and simple text editor for Macs that blocks out all distractions. It’s a great little tool, performs exactly as advertised, but it costs (as of today) $25.00. Pretty steep price for a text editor, even if it does perform exactly as advertised.
Also, while I like the distraction free environment, there’s other stuff I like to have in a text editor: syntax highlighting, easy search within the file, keyboard shortcuts, etc. It does’t have to be heavy on the toolbars and text markup a la Microsoft Word or Open Office, but I’d like it if it had a little more functionality than, say, Notepad.
Truthfully, I like vim. It takes a bit of effort upfront to figure out, but after that initial investment it’s really a great text editor. Now if only it did the distraction free thing…
Oh wait. It Does!
At least it does on the Mac. Not sure if it does on the PC or Linux versions, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it does.
If you do have a Mac, and you already love vim or would like to learn how, here’s how to get the distraction free version to work.
Step 1) Download MacVim.
Then install.
Then start it up.
Step 2) Pick your color scheme.
To change your color scheme you can use the main toolbar as such: Edit –> Color Scheme –> murphy.
“Murphy” is the one I’m using. You can choose whichever on you’d like. One with a dark background is probably a good idea since in fullscreen mode, the sides will be black.
Alternately you can use the command
:colorscheme murphy
in execution mode.
Step 3) Turn on spellcheck
Using the toolbar go to Tools –> Spelling –> Spell Check On
Using execution mode:
:set spell
Of course, you don’t have to turn this on, but for writing blog posts it is useful.
Step 4) Turn on Word Wrap
Using the toolbar go to Edit –> File Settings –> Toggle Wrap at Word
Using execution mode:
:set linebreak
Step 5) Full Screen
Press the following three keys:
Command Shift F
That will toggle Full Screen mode. Then you basically have WriteRoom with the features of vim. 
How to get a quick word count
In command mode press the following:
g Control+g
Which is to say press g, and then press Control and g at the same time.
Enjoy!
