I have been using VIM for years to do my development and feel I am a competent user. I have done some minor tweaks in my .vimrc but I have never written a plugin and very rarely do any scripting in the editor. But, I want to take it to the next level. I esp want to start scripting functionality (preferrably in VIM 7 via Ruby).
It's hard to beat simply diving in with the vim help-files and trying your hand at some scripting. The included help files are volumnous in their coverage, even if it can be a bit of a task to find the material. I'd much rather have that problem than not have the answer in there at all.
There's also a treasure-trove of example scripts at www.vim.org where you can find a handful of ones that sound interesting and rip into their guts to see what makes them tick. You can try your hand at tweaking them and see what you can do.
Additionally, when/if you have questions, this list is a very welcoming place to try and help you along.
I remember there being a couple of VIM books out there. Are any worth reading for someone like me? Recommendations?
O'Reilly has _Learning the vi Editor_ and the _vi Pocket Reference_ both of which sound like you're past them a bit. Perhaps more to your interest would be _Vi IMproved--Vim_ put out by New Riders, which focuses specifically on Vim. I've thumbed through all three, reading the parts I found interesting, but find that between the help-files and the list, dead-tree (paper) books can't keep up with the pace.
Having used Vim for nearly 7 years (and vi before that), there are still dark corners of Vim I've never explored. I don't know whether that should encourage or terrify you. :) But basic scripting is easy enough to pick up for anybody who has used other programming languages. Particularly, Vim7 has the nicities of list/dictionary data-types that make some previously painful operations much less so.
HTH, -tim
