The language itself is a subset of JavaScript (ES6). I don’t know of a PB specific language mapping file for vim, etc.
I’d second the in browser preview, added in V3.24. There has always been a live 1D preview on top, and now in the editor a preview for 2D/3D if a pixel map is configured. You can do most things with these previews without any physical LEDs, though you still need a Pixelblaze running and a browser.
The language compiler runs in that browser app, so sending it code via another method is going to be fairly challenging.
However, the editor used (Ace) does have a vim mode, via a plugin that doesn’t ship with Pixelblaze. Thanks to StackOverflow, I found a way this can be loaded on demand. Running this in your browsers dev console seems to do the trick:
ace.require("ace/lib/net").loadScript("https://rawgithub.com/ajaxorg/ace-builds/master/src-min-noconflict/keybinding-vim.js",
function() {
editor.setKeyboardHandler(ace.require("ace/keyboard/vim").handler);
})
With a bit of work you could hack that into the page (download, ungzip, hack, gzip, upload) or use some browser extension to inject that snippet whenever you load the page.
Or use this purpose built extension that enables vim on any Ace editor: