changes in the default debian vim configuration
Stefano Zacchiroli
zack at debian.org
Thu Dec 8 13:50:50 UTC 2005
On Wed, Dec 07, 2005 at 10:24:28PM -0500, James Vega wrote:
> I'd go the other way and say that we should leave things alone except
> for maybe setting nocompatible in the system-wide vimrc.
There is probably not a lot of discuss other than hear the opinions of
all of us maintainers.
Still, I have to observe that the current policy for default vim
settings make a lot of people think that vim is not good as other
editors (notably, of course, emacs) simply because they don't know the
existence of some settings.
Really, a lot of people I know which use vim, don't know the existence
of many settings just because there are too many of them. Perhaps a good
intermediate choice would be to add some of the settings I mentioned as
commented entries in /etc/vim/vimrc.
I think that easing our users the way they learn abouth their favorite
editor is one of our duties.
Anyhow, coming at the single settings ...
> > "set showcmd" Show (partial) command in status line.
> > "set showmatch" Show matching brackets.
> > "set ignorecase" Do case insensitive matching
> > "set incsearch" Incremental search
> > "set autowrite" Automatically save before commands like :next and :make
>
> The only one of these I would feel comfortable turning on by default is
> 'showcmd' and maybe 'showmatch'.
Ok.
> The rest are much too personal, IMO, and 'autowrite' should definitely
> not be enabled by default. If anything, 'hidden' should be used.
Agreed for 'autowrite' and 'hidden'.
> > and in addition enable also
> >
> > set smartcase
> > set mouse=a
> > set smartindent
> > syntax on
> > filetype indent on
>
> Again, these fall in the "too personal" bucket for me.
I can agree on 'ignorecase'/'smartcase'.
I can't see how 'mouse=a' can be a too personal setting nor how could it
harm. The only drawback is with textual selection, but people is already
acquainted to use SHIFT+mouse to select text for X/gpm and thus adding
the mouse capability to vim wont be a problem.
Idem for syntax highlighting: it is already enabled per default in gvim,
why disable it in vim? It is a problem only for very large (e.g. XML)
files, but I think they are the exception rather than the rule.
I understand your perplexities about 'smartident' and 'filetype indent',
I think we can add them as commented entries in vimrc.
> We've also seen situations[1][2] where the config we set in the
> system-wide vimrc has caused various issues for the end user. Granted,
> these have been more complex than a basic setting of an option, but it's
> something to consider.
This is just a matter of discovering issues and solving them, I don't
think we should avoid fine tuning vim for the risk of causing troubles.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -*- Computer Science PhD student @ Uny Bologna, Italy
zack@{cs.unibo.it,debian.org,bononia.it} -%- http://www.bononia.it/zack/
If there's any real truth it's that the entire multidimensional infinity
of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs. -!-
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
Url : http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-vim-maintainers/attachments/20051208/43c16c1b/attachment.pgp
More information about the pkg-vim-maintainers
mailing list