When I'm in "Insert" mode in VIM I want to able to move around the page with my arrow keys. However when I hit them they insert the letters A B C and D, rather than moving in their respect directions. Is there anything I can do to fix this? And also I have seen screens of VIM where it shows "--INSERT--" near the bottom on the screen to indicate when your in that mode. That indicator does not appear, how can I get it to appear? I'm using version 6.1 Thanks for any help you can provide!

Hi BinaryBob,

you may get some help from the man.... that is man vi

I looked through the man as best I could, and it doesnt mension my problem(s). Any other ideas?

Methinks this is a NCurses related problem. try recompiling ncurses from sources. look to the LFS book for help and/or hints, this is a great help.

Ok, I got the latest ncurses, complied, installed and then did the same with VIM again. No effect AH! This has been buggin me for months what the heck is wrong?

What's the response when you do:

echo $TERM

-mk

Hit escape then you will no longer be in insert mode, then you can use your arrow keys to move around.

mikek147,
TERM = linux when im not in X windows. and
TERM = xterm when im under X windows using xterm.

dbl227,
I know of that. Is there no way to be able to move around when in incert mode?

And also another thing that bothers me is if im at the beginning of a line, and I hit backspace it wont delete the invisible "newline" and go up to the end of the last line, is there any remedy for that?

The backspace problem is easy to solve. Add :set backspace=2 in your .vimrc file. As far as I know, there is no way to move around in insert mode (that's what command mode is for). If you are in insert mode and want to run one quick command or move over a wode, sentence, etc. (anything that can be done in one command), you can press Ctrl-O followed by the command that you want. By the way, many of your problems would be quickly solved if you did the following: read the manual (:help usr_01.txt (read the manual)). Vim is not easy to learn, but you reap the benefits of it in the long run. As with anything worthwhile in this world, "No pain, no gain."

You might also want to check out the posts at http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...p=comp.editors but don't post until you've searched thoroughly to see if your question(s) have already been answered or not.

Thank you very much. The :set backspace=2 in my .vimrc acctually solved all of my problems ?!?! go figure, anyways Thank you again.