 Vim is an essential part of my workflow and has been basically since I started using Linux. Now I use Vim for any number of things, including my day job where I'm a writer slash editor. And I've spent the better part of two or three years now perfecting my Vim config to the point where it works really well for me, despite the fact that again, I'm not a developer. So what I wanted to do today was talk about five plugins that are really good for non developers. Now, just because I've said that they're for non developers doesn't mean that developers can't find these useful. In fact, there's at least one on this list that is super helpful for developers. But what I wanted to focus on were plugins that are specifically useful for me for non development work. So let's go ahead and jump in. The first one on the list is very hard to freaking explain. And I can say that with absolute passion, because I've tried to explain what VimWiki is many, many times. And you're not supposed to use the word in the divet definitions. So I can't just say VimWiki is a wiki is a piece of wiki software, you know, it doesn't really work that well because what is wiki software? Well, to try to explain what VimWiki is, it's a note taking application. Basically, it's a note taking plugin for them. And it uses a modified version of Markdown. So you if you've used Markdown before, some of that stuff works here fairly well. It's not all here, but some of it is. And the basic idea is, is that you can create links that are pages within side of your wiki. Now, each of these links that you see here, you see here, which are the ones that are in the brackets, like so, those are links to other pages inside of my wiki. So I have a whole page with my video idea. So if I hit enter, that'll go into my video ideas, wiki page. And each of these are also links that would link to their own respective pages. And then inside of these, I can like, let's just say I create one, I can go in insert mode, do double brackets, that's going to create a link. And then this is a link. And then I enter, I'll actually enter that brand new created page, which is actually creating a brand new Markdown like text file that I can store whatever I want. And I can create another link, which would then link to another page, or I can do something like there, you know, I can create a list or something like that, or I could do a regular link if I want to say link to a website or something that I could do that, or I could create heading which in in Markdown, it's not the traditional hash sign, it's going to be equal signs. So this would be heading like so. So it's a little bit different than regular Markdown, but you can you kind of get the idea. It's a note taking application. And because it allows you to link to pages within pages, you can kind of create your own hierarchy of link or a link tree of notes. And it's really very, very powerful. And it's very, again, hard to explain what it is. But I use it every single day, again, mostly to take notes for video topics and things for work. So that is VimWiki. Now the second plugin that I want to talk about is the one that is going to be helpful for both developers and non developers, but I use it for I guess both purposes, because I also use it for like configuring window manager files and stuff like that. But basically what this is is called the lemonade. And it is a plugin that basically just closes parentheses and brackets. That's basically what it does. So if I were to open up or going to go into insert mode here and type in a bracket, it's going to automatically provide me with the open and close brackets. If I wanted to go into insert mode again, and say use two quotation marks, it would also open and close the quotation marks. And then I could type inside of them if I wanted to. And then it does the same thing with parentheses. And it does the same thing with single quotes. So if I just do this, it would also do the single quotes. And basically, it just means that when you type in a parentheses, it's going to get automatically give you the end parentheses, or if you type in a bracket, it's going to give you the end bracket. That means you don't have to type those things. And you also lower the chances that you're going to forget to close the parentheses or close the bracket. Now, like I said, you can probably see how this is useful for both developers and non developers, specifically if you're running code. But for me personally, I use it because I use markdown all the time. So if you've ever used markdown before, you'll know that a link looks something like this. So it's brackets, name of the link, and then parentheses, the link, you know, so by having deliminate here, I can save myself some worry over forgetting to close a bracket or parentheses. Basically, that's all it does is very simple. Now, the next plugin that I want to talk about is one that has one purpose and one purpose only. And that is that it remembers your position. Now, for me personally, I often deal with documents that are 20, 30, 40, 50,000 words in length, sometimes even more than that. And when I'm dealing with those large documents, a lot of times I don't get all of my work on that document done in one session, I have to come back to it. And sometimes I just keep it open. I mean, this should be honest, I'm a tab kind of guy, I use tabs all the time. So sometimes those documents just stay open forever. But when I do have to close them, I like to be able to come back and know exactly where I am. So them last place basically just remembers your position. So here I am the latest show notes for the podcast. And I'm going to scroll down to say, this third list item here, and then I'm going to close, quit and close, I'm going to save and close this document. And then I'm going to reopen it. And as you can see, it remembered exactly where I was with the position of the cursor. And that's all them last place does, it does, it doesn't have any other options. It just remembers your position after you've saved and closed. And it is one of those plugins where I just I couldn't do without it because I'm always going back into a document, I really don't want to have to search for where I was, especially if I'm not at the end of the beginning of the document, if I'm at the end of the beginning, the beginning, that doesn't matter so much. But if I'm in the middle somewhere, this is a lifesaver, because it just remembers where I was at. Okay, so the fourth one on the list is called Goyo. Now Goyo is a plugin that is very, it's not something that's going to be for everybody. I can understand that. But if you are someone who likes to write in focus mode, say you've tried a GUI text editor that has focus mode, if you are that type of person, you would like Goyo, basically what Goyo does in I'll enter it now is it basically takes all of your text and removes everything superfluous to it and just puts it in the center so that there's nothing else here. So if let's just say I had a split going here, so so I have a split here and I'm, you know, I could be working in both of these or whatever, but I really don't want the distraction of both of them side by side, but I don't want to close one. So if I just hit my keyboard to go into Goyo, those are technically still open, but I now have focused just on the one that I want to work on, then I can go back to the split if I wanted to and then go back here. Goyo basically is just focus mode for them and it's amazing. And I use it all the time because it just like a lot of times I will have a split open. So I'll have two documents side by side, but I only really need to focus on one when I'm writing. So I go into focus mode or Goyo in this case and do my writing there. And then if I need to go back and, you know, reference something in the split, I can easily go back to the split and then just have all of my focus right here where it needs to be. So that is the fourth one that is Goyo. The last one on the list is called them Markdown. Now this is a plugin that really is only to be good if you focus on writing Markdown. If you're not ever going to write Markdown, this plugin will probably be pretty useless to you. Basically all them Markdown does is colorize Markdown when you use it. So if I had a heading here, so this is a heading like so and it does the same thing for let's just say a H3 heading. This is a heading like so. And it does the same thing for like lists. This is a list. This is a list. And it will also continue the list. See how it automatically put another asterisk there for a list. If I wanted to continue the list, it would do the same thing if I were doing a numbered list. So this is a list. This is a list and so on and so forth. So basically it just color codes things when they're in Markdown because when you use them inside of a terminal, you're not going to get the traditional auto replace of a Markdown editor. So your headings aren't going to all of a sudden become really big text because there's only one size text available to a terminal. Therefore it kind of has to cheat and it's cheats by making a different color. And that's what them Markdown does. And it's again a very simple plugin and one that's not going to be useful for everyone. But if you do write in Markdown, this is a tool that you kind of can't do without simply because it will make things stand out. It'll make the headings look like headings at least in some form or fashion. When you have a list, it'll make it look like a list. And that is really nice. Now I have two bonus ones for you just because it's the holiday season and why the hell not. So the reason why these are bonuses is because technically they're mostly for developers. So they don't really fit in with the rest of lists, but I use them all the time, even though I'm not a developer. And people are always asking me what specifically this one is. And as you can see, I have a list of color codes here. And as you can also see they're color coded with the actual color. And this is not something that them does by default. So if you are someone who does a lot of racing, again, you don't have to be a developer or a CSS website coder or whatever, to do any of this stuff. If you just do a lot of racing, and you use color codes inside of them, this plugin, which is called them CSS color, basically what it does is when it sees a color code in this specific format, it will actually pull the color and then highlight it in that color. So if it's white, it's going to be white if it's this really weird orange color, it's going to be orange and purple purple, you get you get the idea right. Now, like I said, you don't have to be a developer to use this because a lot of people do racing inside of them or they mess around with configuration files for window managers or whatever. And they come across color codes like this. It's really nice to be able to see what that color code actually relates to what color it associates with. So that is Vim CSS color. All the links for these plugins, by the way, will be in the video description. The last one on the list is called nerd tree. Now, nerd tree is entirely superfluous because them has its own file manager built in. But I really don't care about using it. I have always preferred the way nerd tree does things and nerd tree, like I said, is a file manager. So if I were to open up nerd tree, which I have a keybinding for, basically, it just shows you all the files that are in the directory you're currently in and you can navigate between them. So if I wanted to navigate to say this one, I could do that or I could go back to it and go to this one. And, you know, I can just switch between files really easily. And obviously, I'm not limited to the directory that I'm in, I can go up a directory, I can go to the configs in my polybar configuration file that I wanted to, and, you know, do whatever I wanted. And that's basically what nerd tree does. It's a file manager. And it allows you to navigate between your file structure really easily with a keybinding. And you can obviously tweak those key bindings to however you want inside of your configuration file. And it's just really nice to go through and go to different files really easily without having to quit them and then navigate to the file that you want to edit. So like I said, it is superfluous because them has its own file manager. But I prefer nerd tree because of the location of it. And it just seems to work better for me. So those are the two extra ones along with five that I use all the time. And that's basically it for this video. So if you have other really awesome plugins for what you'd consider non development work, I'd love to hear what those things are down in the comment section below. You can follow me and master down or Odyssey, those links will be in the video description. You can support me on Patreon at patreon.com slash Linux cast links for liberapay and YouTube will also be in the video description. Thanks to everybody who does support me on Patreon and YouTube because you're all absolutely amazing without you. The channel just will not be anywhere near where it is right now. So thank you so very, very much for your support. I truly do appreciate it. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time.