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
