add basic vim config

diff --git a/docs/starting/dev-env.rst b/docs/starting/dev-env.rst
index cbddc52..46539b0 100644 (file)
--- a/docs/starting/dev-env.rst
+++ b/docs/starting/dev-env.rst
@@ -11,6 +11,49 @@ Editors
 Text Editors
 -------------
 
+** VIM **
+
+There exist a couple of plugins and settings for the VIM editor to aid python
+development. If you only develop in Python, a good start is to set the default
+settings for indentation and linewrapping to values compliant with PEP8::
+
+    set textwidth=79
+    set shiftwidth=4
+    set tabstop=4
+    set expandtab
+    set softtabstop=4
+    set shiftround
+
+With these settings newlines are inserted after 79  characters and indentation
+is set to 4 spaces per tab. If you also use VIM for other languages, there is a
+handy plugin at indent_, which handles indentation settings for python source
+files.
+Additionally there is also a handy syntax plugin at syntax_ featuring some
+improvements over the syntax file included in VIM 6.1.
+
+These plugins supply you with a basic environment for developing in Python.
+However in order to improve the programming flow we also want to continually
+check for PEP8 compliance and check syntax. Luckily there exist PEP8_ and
+Pyflakes_ to do this for you. If your VIM is compiled with `+python` you can
+also utilize some very handy plugins to do these checks from within the editor.
+For PEP8 checking install vim-pep8_. Now you can map the vim function
+`Pep8()` to any hotkey or action you want. Similarly for pyflakes you can
+install vim-pyflakes_. Now you can map `Pyflakes()` like the PEP8 function and
+have it called quickly. Both plugins will display errors in a quickfix list and
+provide an easy way to jump to the corresponding line. A very handy setting is
+calling these functions whenever a buffer is saved. In order to do this, enter
+the following lines into your vimrc::
+
+    autocmd BufWritePost *.py call Pyflakes()
+    autocmd BufWritePost *.py call Pep8()
+
+
+.. _indent: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=974
+.. _syntax: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=790
+.. _Pyflakes: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyflakes/
+.. _vim-pyflakes: https://github.com/nvie/vim-pyflakes
+.. _PEP8: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pep8/
+.. _vim-pep8: https://github.com/nvie/vim-pep8
 
 
 IDEs