Ubuntu, vim and python

Until now, I had never used vi or vim as anything more than an emergency configuration file editor. The following two posts helped me leverage some of the more advanced features and plugins of vim to make it a nice python, fully-featured python editor. All credit goes to the following two posts. Most of the content below is copy-pasted directly from them. It's not my intention to plagiarize; this is just a spot for me to take notes, so that I could repeat the vim configuration process as painlessly as possible.

http://dancingpenguinsoflight.com/2009/02/python-and-vim-make-your-own-ide/
http://henry.precheur.org/2008/4/18/Indenting_Python_with_VIM.html

Create the directory ~/.vim/ftplugin; create a file named ~/.vim/ftplugin/python.vim containing:

setlocal tabstop=4
setlocal softtabstop=4
setlocal shiftwidth=4
setlocal textwidth=80
setlocal smarttab
setlocal expandtab

To get this working, simply add:

syntax on
set number
filetype plugin indent on

to your ~/.vimrc file

Additionally, you need to download the latest version of this script, placing it in ~/.vim/indent/python.vim. This will make indentation much less of a chore, and more of a pleasure. Be sure to also check out this blog post, wherein Henry Prêcheur explains how to improve indentation for comments as well.

To improve the formatting and display of improper indentation, as well as special highlighting for things like string formatting, download the latest version of this script, and place it in ~/.vim/syntax/python.vim.