John Beckett wrote:
[...]
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".
[...]
This sounds very like file types. When you are opening a file
appropriate actions can be done automatically in order to adjust vim or
you can do it yourself. So your "do <stuff to select a theme>" is
spelled in vim like ":set ft=<file type>". If you are writing an e-mail
and you have vim set as your e-mail text editor it is possible that vim
will detect you are writing an e-mail and will automatically adjust
itself for e-mail editing. You may also add additional file types by
downloading them from vim.org or somewhere else...
So, most part of a file type specific settings should reside in a file
type script. And if you have some general preferences them you should
add them to your .vimrc. If a preference is file type specific you can
add a FileType event to your .vimrc. I see no point in adding
"themes". As for me, everything that can be done using "themes" can
already be done using things that already exists in vim.
If you think that you can provide a better defaults for novice users you
can just write a script that will adjust vim the way you see it and ask
Bram to add it into the distribution along with a note in the tutor,
like "If you feel that vim is too difficult to master you may try
another set of defaults specially crafted for novice users. In order to
turn them on just add the following line to your .vimrc: <here goes
command to source your script>".
