Georg Dahn wrote: > Andrew Myers wrote: >> Actually, I think I would make the strong claim that what I am >> talking about is not just some personal preference, but a fairly >> universal one. All serious text formatting systems try to make line >> lengths equal (without introducing additional line breaks), because >> this is known to aid readability. > > If your purpose is text formatting, you are right, but Vim is no text > formatting system, but a text editor which is mainly used for > programming and other technical stuff. > >> The TeX formatting algorithm is one >> widely used approach. I can't see what generally held notion of >> goodness the current formatting optimizes for except algorithmic >> simplicity. But perhaps someone can explain why they prefer >> linebreaks to be inserted greedily? > > Vim is mainly used for coding and other technical stuff. Your preferred > behavior is better for formatting prose, but it is not wanted when > someone wants to reformat C code. In many situations I would like to > have your suggested behavior available, thus I wrote that I would like > to have it in addition to the current behavior. I really miss it when I > write emails or some other texts in prose. But when I use Vim for more > technical stuff like coding, I prefer the current behavior. > > Best wishes, > Georg Dahn
Vim is a plain _text editor_ , not a fancy _word processor_ . This said, 20 years ago on Dos 3.2 I used a shareware plaintext editor which could justify text and even print it justified within user-settable left and right margins using pixel-spacing and a proportional font on a 9-pin raster printer. It would even "ring the bell", like typewriters do (actuating the computer's beep), when you arrived at a user-settable column near the right margin. Vim doesn't do that (or at least it doesn't do it out of the box), but it does many things which that primitive editor didn't do. Syntax colouring, for example, or running scripts with ifs and whiles. And, of course, things which were unknown in those days, such as selecting a display font or editing Unicode text. All in all, I wouldn't go back, even if I still had a copy of that old editor someplace where I could use it. Best regards, Tony. -- A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small package. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message from the "vim_dev" maillist. For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
