Starter Vim setup for academic writing in markdown with pandoc and bibtex support.
** Be advised that this repo is a modification of airbornelamb/vim-academic
project. His project uses Turabian, while I use Chicago Style and I've made modifications to install.sh
.**
Minimal terminal setup to write academic works with vim
via pandoc
and zotero6
.
Backup your ~/.vimrc
file and ~/.vim/
folder (this is not important if you haven't used Vim before). The installation will remove vim from the system first because some vim versions do not have python support. You will want to install the vim-nox or vim packages for your distribution.
You could also check if you have support already and remove python from the install script:
vim --version | grep '+python'
git clone https://github.com/ealvar3z/vim-academic.git ~/vim-academic
Then
~/vim-academic/install.sh
The first time that Vim opens it will launch vim +PluginInstall
to install all vundle plugins. You may then simply run vim
in the terminal after that.
You're all set! Enjoy!
- This assumes that you have installed Zotero 4, which you can download for linux here
- and Better Bibtex plugin, which you can download here and use these install instructions
An example workflow will then be as follows:
- Import sources into Zotero (manually or with the browser clipper)
- Export sources into better bibtex .bib file into
~/vim-academic
- Begin editing with vim. IT IS IMPORTANT THAT YOUR PAPER USES .mkd extension and is NAMED THE SAME AS the bibtex .bib file (ex. mypaper.mkd and mypaper.bib)
<Tab>
: While entering a citation (ex. @kostenberger) you may press tab to search and insert citation keys:Goyo
: Entering this in normal mode will launch Goyo and Limelight together for distraction-free writing<F5>
: Will toggle Goyo (same as entering:Goyo
<F6>
: Will toggle the UndoTree<F7>
: Traverses backwards in the UndoTree<F8>
: Traverses forwards in the UndoTreeg <Ctrl-g>
: pressing this sequence in command mode will give you document statistics, including word count.:F
: Will start full-text search with fzf and ripgrep. Very powerful!
The install script will setup the following key bindings for bash, zsh, and fish.
CTRL-T
- Paste the selected files and directories onto the command line- Set
FZF_CTRL_T_COMMAND
to override the default command - Set
FZF_CTRL_T_OPTS
to pass additional options
- Set
CTRL-R
- Paste the selected command from history onto the command line- If you want to see the commands in chronological order, press
CTRL-R
again which toggles sorting by relevance - Set
FZF_CTRL_R_OPTS
to pass additional options
- If you want to see the commands in chronological order, press
ALT-C
- cd into the selected directory- Set
FZF_ALT_C_COMMAND
to override the default command - Set
FZF_ALT_C_OPTS
to pass additional options
- Set
If you're on a tmux session, you can start fzf in a split pane by setting
FZF_TMUX
to 1, and change the height of the pane with FZF_TMUX_HEIGHT
(e.g. 20
, 50%
).
When you are done writing, use pandoc from the terminal to convert to your final result, such as DOCX
pandoc PAPER.mkd --smart --standalone --bibliography PAPER.bib --csl=Turabian-NO-Ibid.csl --reference-docx=prtstemplate.docx -o FINALPAPER.docx
Or for HTML output
pandoc PAPER.mkd --smart --standalone --bibliography PAPER.bib --csl=Turabian-NO-Ibid.csl --reference-docx=prtstemplate.docx -css splendor.css -o FINALPAPER.html
- Use any of the CSS themes from the excellent Markdown CSS
- Other functions should work as expected. You can define key mappings for your own usage by editing the file
~/.vim/vimrc
, and you are certainly encouraged to do so. That's how you can get the most out of Vim. - If you're looking for a quick tutorial to learn Vim, "Learn Vim Progressively" is a great one.