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.
The idea is that you can press ESC a few times without having to check what mode you are in exactly (that can be quite difficult at times). Typing one ESC too many is easily done, I don't like this to have side effects. > 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. It's a bit dangerous to assume that someone else wants something. Do you know about the Abeline paradox? I don't think you can define "modern PC" without getting into a lot of discissions. Unless you mean "MS-Windows XP PC with notepad", that would be clearer. > > 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. Perhaps providing a file with commented-out option settings and mappings. With comments and/or links to the help to explain what they do. The ":options" window still requires adding lines to a script file. And it doesn't support mappings. > 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. That's just because you happen to need this, and pick the one feature out of the thousands available and map it to a key. If you would want to do this for all the features you find out that your key combinations get too complicated. It's essential that you do this mapping yourself. > 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. If you are not willing to type ":copen" but typing "\co" does then I'm completely confused. > > 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. Everybody has a different set of features that he needs. -- A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well. /// 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 ///
