Starting Vem

To start Vem, you can use any of the following commands:

  • vem: starts Vem in terminal mode using Vim

  • nvem: starts Vem in terminal mode using Neovim

  • gvem: starts Vem in graphical mode using Vim

In all three cases, the format of the command is the same:

vem [arguments] [file1 file2 ...]

If you pass multiple filenames, all them are opened at start.

Vem's startup scripts are just wrappers around the vim and nvim commands and any [arguments] provided are directly passed to them. The only thing that the startup wrappers do is to instruct those commands to load Vem's specific configuration.

For example, passing the -o argument (which opens all provided files in different Windows):

vem -o file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt

is similar to executing:

vim -u path/to/vemrc -o file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt

Execution without installation

That last command is an example of how to execute Vem without having to install it. In case you don't want to install Vem system wide, you can just clone its repository somewhere in your user folder and execute:

vimcommand -u path/to/vemrc [other arguments] [files...]

Where vimcommand is any Vim compatible executable (like vim, nvim, gvim, ...).

The -u argument

Vem startup scripts accept any argument that the original commands of Vim and Neovim accept with the exception of -u <script>. This parameter is used to initialize Vem itself. If you include it in the command line and provide an alternative initialization script then Vem's configuration will be skipped and that script will be used instead.

In general, you may not need to use it since you can provide your own configuration using a vemrc file. However, if for any reason you want to use -u parameter while still loading Vem's configuration, you can add the following line to the top of your script:

source path/to/vemrc

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