John Beckett wrote: > Bram Moolenaar wrote: > > Mostly PageUp and PageDown do the reverse of each other. If you > > mean that the cursor has moved, that is a completely different thing. > > I'm not sure what "completely different thing" adds. I'm just trying > to respond to your call for suggestions on how to make Vim more > attractive to new users. I know a couple of people who don't like > the fact that, in Vim, PageUp does not reverse PageDown. > Naturally I am talking about the cursor moving.
The completely different thing is that this is not about scrolling but about moving the cursor so that it's in the visible text. I know this is different from most other editors and requires a bit of time getting used to. And it's something that will change the feeling of how the editor works, thus it's unlikely to change. I thought about this a few times, but still don't know a solution that won't cause trouble for people who are used to the vi behavior. And no, an option is not really an option. > > Switching off search highlighting is part of the tutor. People who > > skip the vimtutor are going to run into trouble anyway. > > OK - but you could make Vim more attractive if (when enabled > by some new option) pressing Escape in Normal mode cleared > search highlights and cleared the message line. No, I don't want that. Pressing ESC is to get back to Normal mode, it should not have side effects like this. It's always bad when one key does two or more things. If you only want one of them you have a problem. You appear to assume that what you want is what everybody wants. Many users think that way. But that is not so. It's very hard to figure out what works right for most people and doesn't work bad for some people. > > I do agree that good defaults are important. But backwards > > compatibility is also important. It's not always easy to make > > a choice. > > Suggestion: Provide a simple way for a user to invoke a > standard set of predefined mappings. In fact, there could > be various predefined "themes" that insert useful settings > into vimrc. It's better to have the user get used to the existing commands. There is one "theme" for MS-Windows users, and it's already causing quite a bit of confusion. I don't think we want more of that. Imagine how may exceptions we need to handle in the documentation: "if you use theme X then this doesn't work and you need to type XYZ". > Then, I could write an email to a friend saying > "Run gvim and do <stuff to select a theme>. > Then you can press F11 to do <clever thing>". > For example, perhaps F11 = ":cn", Shift-F11 = ":cp". You can always tell someone to download your script and use it. That's quite simple, you only need to drop it in a specific directory. > Naturally there would be a lot of different opinion on what > should be included. Anything would be better than the current > situation where I have to convince a prospective new user > to become a guru before they can use some of Vim's > brilliant features. No matter under what key you put something, you still need to know what key it is. -- Portable Computer: A device invented to force businessmen to work at home, on vacation, and on business trips. /// Bram Moolenaar -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- http://www.Moolenaar.net \\\ /// sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\ \\\ download, build and distribute -- http://www.A-A-P.org /// \\\ help me help AIDS victims -- http://ICCF-Holland.org ///
