On 2013-04-24, Sung Pae wrote: > So I retract my last response: a global-local formatprg is clearly > useful for both prose and code, and comes at the cost of a small > non-breaking change. > > Tony Mechelynck's criticism is that it is superfluous. I disagreeน, but > you will have to convince him before Bram will pay any attention. :) > > Sung Pae > > น Why have formatprg at all then?
'formatprg' existed in Vim 6 and possibly in earlier versions; 'formatexpr' did not appear until Vim 7. Vim seems to be moving away from relying on external programs to expand functionality and toward having more capability built-in. One of the reasons for this is to accommodate Windows users who don't have access to the rich set of tools available in Unix. Another reason is that built-in tools have access to Vim's variables and functions and allow for better integration with Vim. I think that 'formatexpr' offers better functionality than 'formatprg', including the ability to run external programs, which is probably why Tony says that it's superfluous. 'formatprg' is simpler to use in some cases and, more importantly, must be kept for backwards compatibility. Regards, Gary -- -- 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 because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "vim_dev" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
