Changing the practice of quiting and opening vi (v

Question

One of the primary distinction betweeen vi (vim) and emacs, is emacs is designed and supposed to be run at times without quitting, where as given the quick load time of vim, it is easier to quit and start for editing tasks. I read that it has become a cultural difference between these two editor users.

I tend to think that keeping the editor running at all times, kind of helps in productivity as you know that, something is in progress and you need not start again. What is best tricks and plugins that you have found to run a single vim session and do all your tasks from there?

For e.g, I edit Python programs, then quit to run the appengine appcfg and go back. Sometimes quit current file to open another file. I have not yet gotten used to concept of buffers and tabs, but rather run vim in my screen sessions, if I want to edit multiple files.

Answer 1

I keep a single vim window open for days at a time. split windows work really nicely on large screens. I also like tabs; I cluster my splits for a single project in a tab, but keep other tabs around for my day plan, my vim wiki, scratch notes for when I'm interrupted. I find tabs easier to use than multiple windows.