Vim tip for Quiver

Navigating wrapped lines using Vim

I was finding myself struggling to navigate between long wrapped lines in Quiver using Vim's j and k commands. Text, as opposed to code, can have long physical lines. I could break them up by add a line break after every period but that feels strange. While perusing the Quiver wiki I landed on the Vim section (opens new window). There was my answer:

Quiver has line wrapping turned on by default (src). To get j and k working normally, either use :set nowrap or :map j gj and :map k gk.

I applied the keymap and it worked beautifully. I also learned about Vim's gj option for the first time. Here is the documenation (opens new window) if you are interested.

AppleScript

The next problem was that the map commands were not being persisted. At every restart, I would have to retype :map j gj and :map k gk. The docs came in handy again and pointed me to this applescript (opens new window). The script would programmatically open Quiver and type in those commands. I modified the script to my preferences (opens new window). Gave it the correct access permissions for an executable via chmod 755 Quiver.sh and ran it.

Accessability Permissions

I got the following error: execution error: System Events got an error: osascript is not allowed to send keystrokes. (1002).

Turns out my Script Editor didn't have enough permissions. So I went under System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility and checked the box.

However, I wasn't done yet. I ran ./Quiver.sh again and got the same permission error. After some research, I realized I needed to give iTerm (opens new window) those same permissions. This is because I was using iTerm to run the script. I gave it those permissions and it worked without errors. However, Quiver's vim mode started acting weird. Turns out I needed to (programmatically) press Return between the two map calls. I modified my script (opens new window) to add keystroke return between the two map calls and it worked.

Here is the full applescript:

tell application "Quiver"
    activate
end tell

tell application "System Events"
    -- jump to the correct location (split mode pane)
    keystroke tab
    keystroke tab

    -- if we were already in the cell, jump back
    key down {shift}
    keystroke tab
    keystroke tab
    key up {shift}
    delay 0.01


    -- remap vim
    keystroke ":map j gj"
    keystroke return
    keystroke ":map k gk"
    keystroke return
end tell

Handy Alias

The last step was to add an alias so I don't have to remember the full file path to the script. I added this to my .zshrc:

# Quiver
alias quiver='/Users/jibrankalia/dotfiles/quiver/Quiver.sh'

I then ran source ~/.zshrc so that my current shell picked up the changes. I then typed quiver to the shell and voila everything worked.

Thank you for reading.

Credit to Vincent Yang (opens new window) for the original script.