Making Vimperator work with Palemoon

[sofrosune]

Hi, I will explain how to make Vimperator work, for the public benefit.

Vimperator is an add-on that, in short, allows you to use your browser without touching the mouse. It does the same as Pentadactyl, an official Palemoon add-on, but Pentadactyl is noticeably slower and it impairs smooth scrolling.

You can install Vimperator on Palemoon because it's a XUL/XPCOM add-on, and it will partially work. The things that don't work that I noticed are:

• reading the configuration file .vimperatorrc
• the :source and :mkvimperatorrc commands
• accesing the indispensable help files with the commands :help and :helpall

How to make it work

1. Get a copy of the Vimperator installer, that is, the .xpi file. 2 ways:
   1. You can go to the github page, right-click the .xpi link and select "Save link as".
   2. If you have Vimperator installed, you already have the file, so make a copy of it. It should be located at

      Code: Select all

      ~/.moonchild productions/pale moon/(YOUR PROFILE)/extensions/vimperator@mozdev.org.xpi

      or in Windows somewhere like:

      Code: Select all

      C:\Users\(YOUR USER)\Application Data\Moonchild Productions\Pale Moon\Profiles\(YOUR PROFILE)\extensions\vimperator@mozdev.org.xpi
      

2. Extract the contents of the .xpi file. Any decompressing program should work. Then delete the .xpi file.
3. Go to the extracted contents and open the file located at common/content/io.js.
4. Go to line 10 of that file and replace its contents from:

   Code: Select all

   const VERSION = Services.appinfo.platformVersion;

   to:

   Code: Select all

   const VERSION = "55.0";

   ... and save the file. All the credit goes to this github post.
5. In case you have Vimperator installed in Palemoon, uninstall it.
6. Now compress everything that was extracted into a ZIP file, and replace its extension from .zip to .xpi
7. Install the .xpi file that you compressed. You can drag and drop it into Palemoon's window.

Alternative to steps 6 and 7

You can install the modified add-on without recompressing the contents and without creating a new .xpi file, by keeping the decompressed contents somewhere in your computer, and doing some configuration as explained in Pentadactyl's README. It works with any add-on.

1. In the directory location shown in step 1b (choose the one for your OS), inside the extensions folder, create a new empty file called vimperator@mozdev.org. Notice how it's the same name that the add-on would have had if it were installed normally, but without the .xpi extension.
2. Open the file and write in only one line the location to the contents of the decompressed .xpi file. For example:

   Code: Select all

   /home/sofrosune/Downloads/vimperator-3.16

   I assume in Windows you would use backslahes.
3. Restart Palemoon. It may ask you for confirmation to install the new add-on.

Have fun!

[andyprough]

The things that don't work that I noticed are:
...
accesing the indispensable help files with the commands :help and :helpall

Sounds intriguing, but without that help file I'd be lost. There must be hundreds of different key combinations and commands in there, if it's anything like my experiences with Luakit and with Pentadactyl.

Is there a webpage somewhere that has the full help file listed? I don't see one after a bit of online searching.

[sofrosune]

Is there a webpage somewhere that has the full help file listed? I don't see one after a bit of online searching.

I don't know, sorry. But Pentadactyl's help files used to be online at 5digits.org. I mention this because if you run :help in Vimperator, you will notice that it looks almost identical to Pentadactyl's :help. Both add-ons look and function the same, as if one were a fork of the other (Pentadactyl has more options). It is to such an extent that I use my .pentadactylrc as my .vimperatorrc, although some lines fail because Vimperator does not have some commands, such as:

• group
• set downloadsort
• set guioptions (Vimperator uses set toolbars)
• set hlfind (it uses hlsearch)
• set incfind (set incsearch)
• extra highlight keywords (like Comp, CmdInfoMsg, StatusLineNormal)
• iabbreviate (but iabbrev works on both add-ons)

[boriselec]

fork for palemoon on addons site:
https://addons.palemoon.org/addon/vimperator/

[sofrosune]

fork for palemoon on addons site:
https://addons.palemoon.org/addon/vimperator/

Awesome! Did I just miss this on the addons page, or did you publish it just now?

[axben]

Any chance to make this work for Basilisk?

[Moonchild]

Any chance to make this work for Basilisk?

Your best bet is to ask in the Basilisk subforum.