On Fri, 19 May 2006, Meino Christian Cramer wrote: [snip]
IMHO the help files are only for those, who are know already, what they are searching for. A newbie gets hopelessly lost.
The help files are very extensive. Because of this, it has to cover each topic in a brief, accurate and concise way. To do otherwise would cause bloat, confusion and inconsistency.
Example: Q: Why is my "set history=<num>" reset to <num> = 20 regardless where in .vimrc I will set it? A: set nocompatible will reset that to 20
Here's the thread for this discussion: History and "set history=xx" http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vim/message/68390 This issue of the 'compatible' option clobbering other options when the option was set was debated in the thread above. There are valid reasons to all points of view.
A "help history" will no help here. helpgrep will lead to about 200 "hits", which needs searched through until the clue is found.
[snip] A helpgrep with a few hits requires unique words. Unfortunately, "history" and "compatible" are common words.
Suppose your are starting to learn vim. You have learned to edit text basically and to do some tricks to impress your friends of the "World of Notepad" category. So nice so far. Now you want to delete all lines in a file, which conatin a certain pattern. What is "<keyword>" here ? helpgrep will find some hits, but I found none telling me the magic: g/<pattern>/d _IF_ you know already the "g" trick...ok, you may fnd it in the helpfiles....but as a newbie?
[snip] I would advise those who wish to be more proficient at Vim to look through http://www.vim.org/tips It makes a good starting place to try "little" things. Zzapper's list of tips should well include the :global command, and things you can do with it: http://www.vim.org/tips/tip.php?tip_id=305 There are many other such tip lists on the internet.
I would like to have a context-helpfile or something like a cross reference, which maps "natural language search topics" to "vim speek". Something like Lagenscheidts encyclopedia VIM -> English English -> VIM
[snip] Yes there is such a thing: the Vim FAQ http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/vimfaq.html I've included this as a Vim tip at http://www.vim.org/tips/tip.php?tip_id=1172 -- Gerald