First of all. This is not another "how do I exit vim?" shitpost.
I've been using (neo)vim for about two years and I started to notice, that I,m basically unable to use non-vim editors. I do not code a lot, but I write a lot of markown. I'd like to use dedicated tools for this, but their vim emulators are so bad. So I'm now stuck with my customized neovim, devoid of any hope of abandoning this strange addiction.
I always would recommend people to switch to emacs. It is truly a wonderfully transformative experience. But in your case, the question is why do you want to quit using (n)vim?
I switched to (Doom)-Emacs from a ~7yr old homegrown Vim config last week and honestly the configuration is less bad than it seems. If you're mainly writing markdown you'll probably get 99% of the way there by just enabling the dedicated module
As someone who is currently learning emacs, I gotta say, this comment has the energy of someone offering heroin to someone struggling to moderate their cannabis usage (given OP indicated that custom config if a thing they're finding burdensome in a way)
Vim is extremely feature-rich, and people that think otherwise don't really know how to use vim. Saying vim doesn't have a lot of features is just a meme that isn't true.
Also, the vim plugin for vscode is kind of a joke compared to what vim can do. It's very "surface-level" with minor emulation of some of the common keybinds.
Something like vim-table-mode work as an improvement? You got me there though, tables can be a real pain in a terminal.
For the second, I setup an on save hook or watch script to build a PDF and open it. Its been a minute, but I think I had to find a PDF viewer that would refresh if already open and keep the current position on subsequent opens.
Best of luck finding something that works for you!
I use a different tool, visidata. It's especially nice when used as a psql pager.
A text editor isn't the right tool for editing tabular data, imo.
As for KaTeX, what I would do is have a preview process running outside of vim that watches for changes in source files and re-renders. That's the Unix way of doing things.
I know how you feel. I often find myself typing :w into notepad/word at work to save something. Or when I log into a machine that doesn't have the vim extension in vscode I constantly type /something to search, only to realize that I actually wrote that in the file. Then using 'u' to undo just adds more characters and people look at me like I'm on some drugs. Just embrace it!