Vim/URxvt Setup on Arch

for Python Development

I'm on a mission to become efficient in Vim...in the URxvt terminal...on Arch. Here is my setup.

Get URxvt:

sudo pacman -S rxvt-unicode

Find a nice theme from - what an awesome site. Hit export and copy all of the lines from the export module and paste it into ~/.Xresources. Example:

Run the following command and then reopen URxvt to update to new theme:

xrdb ~/.Xresources

Moving onto Vim. Vim should already be installed, but if you want system clipboard functionality then you'll need to install gvim (conflicts with vim):

sudo pacman -S gvim

I am using i3 and I wanted to quickly open Vim from dmenu so I created a simple bash script to handle that called "vimd", put it in /usr/bin, and make the file executable:

#!/bin/sh

urxvt -e vim

Now anytime I want to start a new file in Vim, I Alt+d+vimd.

I also wanted to set Vim as the default editor for certain files. The best way I found to do that was to make a copy of the current Vim.desktop file in /usr/share/applications - I called this "Vimd.desktop". I modified the following two lines:

Exec=urxvt -e vim
Terminal=false

Now you can set the default application as Vimd for whatever files you open (I'm using Thunar for my file manager by the way which is how I set this).

...To Be Continued...