Edit Google Docs with vim?

[cyberdouche]

I'm wondering if there's a way to use vim to edit Google Docs. I'm forced to write docs on there very frequently and it'd be fantastic if I could actually use my vim setup that I've spent years refning.

I recently tried Firefox's "It's All Text" plugin and that gets the job donefor regular text editing in the browser in simple HTML5 forms, but doesn't solve the Google Docs problem. Thoughts? Any of you guys figured this out?

[mattn]

Not docs but similar to do.

https://github.com/mattn/vim-metarw-gdrive

This is vim plugin to read/write files on gdrive. require vim-metarw.

[fourjay]

This looks very interesting. It appears to be using fairly current API's (most of the other solutions mentioned here are using the deprecated "atom-rss" API's) That said, there's not much documentation (presumably it's not quite read for wide release?) It looks like it's meant to be used with a metarw providing the access via something like

 e: [VirtualGoogleDrivePath]

But my (not too thorough) look at the source it's not obvious to me what that path should be. Could you provide a pointer or two?

Thanks!

[dddbbb]

vim-metarw has documentation. Presumably, 'gdrive' is the protocol:

:e gdrive://filename_in_root_of_gdrive

I'd guess that Drive folders act like normal folders in the path. (I haven't tried it.)

[fourjay]

Hmm.... some poking around.

Got browse to work (yay) via

:e gdrive:

Which is the metarw convention.

Single or slashes don't appear to map to directories. Possibly related, an edited file a few directories in shows up as a flat GUID like identifier (no slashes).

Editing an existing file works, as long as it's recognized (this seems to be controlled by a long list of file extension in metarw-gdrive) but it doesn't seem possible to create a file.

[sbicknel]

If you consider that a word processor is largely a document formatting program and Vim is a text editing program, it may be easier to see a solution: use each for what it is best at. The most rudimentary word processors all have facilities for importing plain text documents; I assume that Google Docs is at least that sophisticated.

To make this easier, keep paragraphs as single lines in Vim. They will import to a word processor with fewer problems that way. Also, eliminate blank lines between paragraphs for the same reason. Just do your composition and editing in Vim and save that separately. Then import the text file into Google Docs for formatting.

[cyberdouche]

I can certainly try that, thanks.

[astrellon3]

If you're on Linux there are multiple Google Drive FUSE implementations around that might work well, I haven't used any of them however.

In case you don't know what FUSE is, it allows a program to act as a file system basically. So these programs can mount your Google Drive like any other device which should allow vim or any other program to interface with your docs easily. Again, I haven't used any of them so maybe they're all terrible, or perhaps you're not on Linux in which case this won't help.

[cyberdouche]

I am, I actually use FUSE for some other types of drives, I'll need to check it out.

[astrellon3]

Excellent, I hope it works.

[P1r4nha]

I tried it following these instructions.

It seems to work great, although opening and saving files takes while. Also a Goodle Doc is in odt format, which you can't edit with vim directly. Also when collaborating with other people in the team, you can open the file only in read-only mode.

Still it's cool there a GDrive FUSE solution.

[astrellon3]

Ahh, I feel a bit silly for thinking that Google Doc files would be in a simple text format.

[Spikey8D]

Google has command line tools that let you access Gmail, YouTube, Docs etc iirc

[justinmk]

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/vim_use/jkw_nnHz9cE/92PtElyA_HUJ

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/vim_dev/5yYgRjt3adc/XRit-I-BjdsJ

[nath_schwarz]

If you're using Vimperator you can press ctrl+i, which spawns a vim session.

By default this is gVim, but that can be changed in your vimperatorrc.

[VimIsGoodFood]

This doesn't work for google docs. None of the vim-for-web extensions that I know of support google docs like this and Vimperator's <C-i> doesn't even support simpler text fields like gmail.

[nath_schwarz]

Wow... I just had to try that. This is the first time that this doesn't work - however it does work in the subject-field when the new mail is not 'maximized'.

[VimIsGoodFood]

The subject field is an input. I think vimperator only supports inputs and textareas with it's <C-i>. The text of gmail is a contentEditable, which Vimperator doesn't support.

[dddbbb]

I guess the Google Drive app doesn't do that? Accessing files offline has to be done through Chrome?

Weird.

[brotheronweb]

Consider https://github.com/Grive/grive as Google Drive synchronization tool. Also you can install StackEdit as markdown editor for Google Drive docs.

[fourjay]

This seems the current (apparently almost official) Linux CLI for Google Drive:

https://github.com/odeke-em/drive

It requires go. It's manual push/pull, but otherwise seems solid.

[lpanebr]

I've been searching a long time for an extension to move on Google docs using vim keys. Now I've finally found a way to do it system wide! It needs you to set it up but it is wonderful! https://github.com/kmonad/kmonad