On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 11:21 AM, Christian Brabandt <[email protected]>wrote:
> Hi Donald! > > On Mo, 17 Okt 2011, Donald Allen wrote: > > > On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 10:28 AM, Ben Fritz <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > On Oct 15, 2:43 pm, Donald Allen <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > > > Yes, disabling the viminfo stuff, which I was not aware of, > eliminates > > > this > > > > behavior. I find it very odd that this is enabled by default. I think > > > most > > > > people think of different editing sessions as different editing > sessions, > > > > not a continuation of a previous session. > > > > > > > > But thank you for getting me straightened out about why this is > > > occurring. > > > > > > > > > > The previous search being enabled by default can be a bit confusing, > > > but looking at :help 'viminfo' you can see why: it's not really saving > > > the last search, it's saving a search history! This means if you spend > > > a long time coming up with a complicated regex, it will likely be > > > there when you come back, just by pressing <Up> a few times on the > > > search command-line. This feature is useful enough to be enabled by > > > default, though you can disable it by adding a "/0" to your 'viminfo' > > > option. > > > > > > > I agree that it's useful, but disagree that it should be enabled by > default. > > > > I believe strongly in The Principle of Least Surprise. In other words, I > > think people are most comfortable with software when they can develop a > > mental model, over a reasonable period of time, of how the software > works. > > This is especially important with something as complex as vim. I'm a > *very* > > experienced computer professional, now retired (I wrote my first computer > > program in 1960!), and one of the biggest frustrations I have with vim is > > that it frequently surprises me. I think the issue is partly the choice > of > > defaults and partly the inscrutability of the documentation. It could > also > > be familiarity, and I concede that. I am a relative late-comer to the > > efficiency of the vi interface, having spent almost 40 years as an Emacs > > user (Richard Stallman first implemented Emacs on top of a line editor, > > Teco, a bit like the vi/ex relationship, that ran on the PDP-6/PDP-10 ICS > > systems at MIT and also on the Tenex system we developed at BBN for the > > PDP-10). But I've been using vim long enough now, and have spent enough > time > > reading documentation, that it feels like I should not be surprised as > often > > as I am. Here I'm simply relying on my years of experience in learning to > > use tools like this. I'm sure the reaction of some will be "then don't > use > > it!". That may well happen, but I do feel that vim is extremely good > work, > > but that it has some serious flaws. Whether the net is positive for me or > > not remains for me to decide, taking into account the other alternatives > for > > a vi-like editor. > > I think Vim behaves like that for very long. So I cannot believe that > this is surprising to you. Backwards compatibility is one of Brams main > concerns. May be you were using a pure Vi and not Vim and are now > surprised of the "Improved" features from Vim? Then perhaps you should > use Vim in compatible mode. > Thanks for the suggestion. But, no, I was not using "pure" vi; I was using emacs. But my point has nothing to do with emacs. My point is that I believe that most people view a new editing session as a new editing session, a clean slate. And that's true of every editor I've ever used, which is many, even though emacs has been the principle one for many years. That is certainly the model I have always had. I also think it's fair to say that the viminfo mechanism is not presented up front in the documentation. In the vimbook-OPL, it is explained in Chapter 20, page 231. In the user manual, it's in Chapter 21. There's no mention of it in the vimtutor. I'm not arguing that this is necessarily inappropriate -- it's one of an enormous number of features this editor has, and they can't all be described in Chapter 1. I *am* arguing that it's not something a new user, or even a user of, say, 6 months duration, is likely to run across (how many of you have read the whole user manual?). And responding to your first sentence, doesn't matter how long vim has been doing this; it matters how likely or difficult it is for a new user to find out about this. This, and the contention that other editors don't behave this way, is the basis for my argument that this behavior, useful though it may be in certain situations, shouldn't be the default. It's also the reason that I think your surprise at my surprise is surprising :-) /Don > > regards, > Christian > > -- > You received this message from the "vim_dev" maillist. > Do not top-post! Type your reply below the text you are replying to. > For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php > -- You received this message from the "vim_dev" maillist. Do not top-post! Type your reply below the text you are replying to. For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php
