iPhone writing environment

Tl;dr: I think I have a way to write and edit my book via terminal and vim on my iPhone.

The problem and various failed solutions

My ergonomic desk setup has been, and will be for the next number of months, unavailable for Reasons. To adjust for this, I picked up a pair of XReal Ones. They work well with various devices, whether I’m working, consuming content, or gaming, and I can sit, stand, or recline with no issues.

I started wondering: could I ergonomically work away from my desk without my laptop? I primarily use git, neovim with obsidian.nvim, Obsidian, a browser, and a pomodoro app. I have a semi-usable environment on my [cracked screen] iPad, using Obsidian’s vim mode with Working Copy. Could I get my setup even smaller and more portable?

The Raspberry pi seemed like a good option, but it uses an HDMI out rather than DisplayPort+power over USB-C. After I add the HDMI converter cable to connect the XReal Ones and a battery to power both, the setup is a bit fiddly and not as convenient as a simple laptop+XReal setup.

How about a Samsung phone with DeX? They used to support linux on DeX but discontinued it. I’m iffy on buying an old Samsung device, even at cheap eBay prices, to run an obsolete, unpatched OS. And while the ZFlip 7 has a nice form factor, I’m loath to run Windows 11, and termux is limited. And I don’t want to pay for a brand new device for this. That would also rule out a new iPad mini. And my ancient 11" Macbook Air has a minuscule battery life.

I looked at the various linux phones but if I’m going to carry a second device and a keyboard, my laptop seems the simplest, most cost effective solution.

vim-surround

I can easily type [[ to create a new wikilink, or make a text selection and hit Cmd-L to wikilink that word or phrase, even if that page doesn’t exist yet. With obsidian.nvim, :Obsidian link will bring up the file picker, giving me tons of options even if I want to just create a wikilink with the existing text. After a bit of tweaking, nvim-surround lets me easily surround my selection with [[ ]], making me less reliant on obsidian.nvim.

I had already set up an iSH and vim environment on my iPad, but I couldn’t get neovim running in iSH, and I missed obsidian.nvim too much to use that setup much. Could I set up vim-surround on my iPad and get more used to vim tabs? Could I do that on my iPhone?

Done! Now to test

After some tweaking, I now have a working environment on my iPhone. I had already used my phone to write at the dog park, using Working Copy and Obsidian with the on-screen keyboard. I now have iSH set up with git and vim with vim-surround for more serious writing sessions. I don’t have to carry an extra device. If I want to, I can use my XReal Ones as my monitor and my Logitech Keys-to-Go 2 as my keyboard.

Now I need to test. Maybe I’ll revisit my library days again. Bring my laptop and Roost stand in case my iPhone environment doesn’t work as well as I hope it will. But I can picture myself sitting at a cafe, typing away on my keyboard with my phone on the table, maybe bringing out the AR glasses if I want to be fancy.