John Beckett wrote:
Bram Moolenaar wrote:
No, I don't want that. Pressing ESC is to get back to Normal mode,
it should not have side effects like this.
OK. But my suggestion was not that ESC would go to Normal mode _and_
clear highlighting. My proposal was that if I start in Insert mode,
then press ESC I would be in Normal mode (as normal :), but if I
press ESC again then highlighting and message text would be cleared.
I'm happy so long as you've heard my idea. A couple of people here
seem to think that _I_ want these suggestions. Not at all. I'm
fluent in Vim and don't need any of my proposals for myself. But my
recent experience of trying to make Vim attractive to a programmer
moving into Linux showed me that some simple changes to Vim might
make it a lot more attractive to new users.
You appear to assume that what you want is what everybody wants.
No! For posterity let me record that I am not one of those people.
I'm only making these suggestions because I know you want to
promote Vim usage, and some way to easily invoke a
pre-defined set of behaviour for a modern PC would help IMHO.
Imagine how many exceptions we need to handle in the
documentation: "if you use theme X then this doesn't work
and you need to type XYZ".
I take your point and agree. But I will make one final suggestion:
Do not hide how Vim works. Tell users about vimrc, and what a
mapping is, etc. People who would use Vim are smart, and can
instantly understand that there is a config file, and that keys can
be mapped. But a new user will probably not want to take the time to
work out the details and their optimum settings right now.
Take the wonderful quickfix window (which I use mainly for vimgrep).
Using quickfix with ':copen' etc just doesn't work for me. I don't
mind typing a few commands, but in this situation, the commands
interfere too much with my thoughts. Once I mapped keys for :copen,
:cn and :cp, quickfix was a magnificent feature.
It took me quite some time to get around to finding out how to use the
quickfix window. I would venture that a beginning user can blissfully ignore
it and concentrate on the basic ":help <keyword>" command, the normal-mode
yank, put and delete command, and on switching between Normal, Insert and
maybe Replace modes. Then Visual. Then 'wildmode', 'wildmenu' and filename /
helptag completion. Once the usefulness of ":helpgrep" reaches consciousness,
then it's time to read quickfix.txt more attentively. My solution is just
:map <F2> :cn<CR>
:map <S-F2> :cN<CR>
but what is best for me is not necessarily best for the next guy.
My vague concept about a "theme" is that it would insert text into
vimrc. The user would be told this, and they could modify the text
to taste. Right now, it is pretty easy to get BufExplorer working,
and then \be is the default key sequence to start it. That's like
what I am proposing for other killer features of Vim.
Rather than insert text into vimrc, source the script from the vimrc. The
result is the same, but it's much easier to implement -- and to undo if, six
months or two years later, you decide it's not so great after all.
You can always tell someone to download your script and use it.
There are too many tips and scripts already. I was hoping (*not* for
me!) to integrate some of the best work procedures into one or two
pre-defined behaviours.
John
This approach has already been attempted, not just once as Bram said, but at
least twice (evim and mswin.vim), and the results are far from convincing:
"easy" vim is actually harder to use, and mswin.vim makes some useful Vim
features inacessible, and for others, forces constant reminders everywhere in
the help and in support mailing lists: "If you use Ctrl-V to paste, use Ctrl-Q
instead whenever the help says to use Ctrl-V".
"Cream for Vim" may be a third attempt but I'm not sure, I haven't looked into
it.
Best regards,
Tony.
