On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 2:25 PM, Christian J. Robinson <[email protected]>wrote:
> On Mon, 17 Oct 2011, Donald Allen wrote: > > I believe strongly in The Principle of Least Surprise. >> > > I agree that significant surprises should be avoided, but we all have > different ideas of what constitutes a "significant" surprise, and these > expectations are usually based mostly on our previous experience. > > Since Vim /is/ so powerful, surprises to at least some people are > unavoidable. > > Vim is not the only application I use regularly that saves the search > history (if a vimrc exists which does not explicitly set the 'viminfo' > option to a value that turns it back off), and it is definitely not the > first to enable this feature by default. > > I realize that "just because others are doing it" is not a good enough > excuse for Vim to do it, but Bram has taken the position--rightfully, in my > opinion--that certain features of Vim should be enabled by default when a > vimrc exists, for multiple reasons. > > Some of these reasons, from my perspective: > > * People often use Vim for its power, and having to enable each of the > commonly used extensions is a burden that can, and arguably should > be avoided, because... > * ...The expectations of many who use Vim are that since it has a lot > of powerful enhancements over Vi, those features will be available > by default. > * It reduces the number of "how do I..." support requests to the Vim > Users' list (as well as other unofficial support forums for Vim). > * In a bizarre way, it can reduce the number of a certain type of bug > report. > > To me, it would be a significant surprise if Vim /did not/ enable most of > its "baseline" enhancements by default. The unfortunately reality is that > this is never going to make everybody happy; people will always disagree > about what Vim's defaults should be. > > Originally some feature enhancements of Vim were not enabled by default, > even with the presence of a vimrc, but Bram turned them on after discussion > on this list about whether they should be, including the possible drawbacks. > This same process is usually applied when new features are added. My point > is that Bram is not capriciously enabling his personally preferred feature > set. > Thoughts of capriciousness never entered my head. Many carefully thought-out design decisions turn out to be wrong, some made by me over the years :-) I simply disagree with the decision, but do not denigrate how it was made. And you may well be correct that for the fat part of the distribution of vim users (which may not include me), the decision is the right one. /Don > > - Christian > > -- > Paper clips are the larval stage of coat hangers. > > Christian J. Robinson <[email protected]> > http://christianrobinson.name/ > > -- > 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<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
