From: Tom Sawyer <transami@...>
Date: 2002-08-27T22:41:55+09:00
Subject: ruby+vim experts: how powerful is vim? please help.

hi all,

i have a really important question to ask regarding vim's power to be
programmed. i'm under a heavy deadline and i don't have the time to
build nice GUI forms for every one of my db record types. so i'm looking
at vim as a possible alternative.

essentially data is pulled from my database, formated into yaml, and
presented to the user in vim. the user edits the yaml file, saves and
exits vim, and the file is ported back into the database. i have that
much working. very cool.

but what i need to do is build a vim extention using ruby for each
record type. the extensions need to provide the following:

* prevent the user from editing a line based on the field name at the
beginning of the line.
  
* again, based on the field name at the beginning of the line, be able
to do phrase (not just word) completions from a list of possibilites
pulled from a lookup table in the database.

* sort blocks of text based on a piece of text with it, for exmaple:

      items:
        - name: Product 1
          price: 10.50
        - name: Product 2
          price: 8.50

  resorted to:

      items:
        - name: Product 2
          price: 8.50
        - name: Product 1
          price: 10.50

there are probably a few other things, but if the above can be done then
vim will do the job.

finally, i may outsource the writing of some or all of these vim
extensions. does anyone want a little contract work?

thanks,
~tom (transami)

(p.s. the contract work could lead to more work and bigger $ if one was
interested)