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Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

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Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#51

I'm somewhat amazed but mostly amused that the Vim developers care so little about user experience that they continue to ignore that people have trouble with exiting their tool and refuse to adapt to a more expected convention for exiting it.

For gvim, the X works as expected but what would be a more expected convention from exiting a cl text editor be? Most long running cli tools people are used to are read only and have just a few keys for different views and they tend to use 'q' or 'Esc', any single key isn't an option for a text editor. If they're in normal mode, Ctrl-c does give the message "Type :quit to exit Vim" but I'm guessing most people don't notice it or think the ':' isn't part of the what they have to type because they don't now commands start with it, I would change it to "Type ':q' to exit Vim". But people tend to accidentally leave normal mode by trying to type other things, so the Ctrl-C message isn't always helpful.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#54
post #33
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it really is that easy. If you try to -c, the program even tells you to use :q It's just become a meme at this point.

But why would i be pressing -c in the first place if i don't know any Vim commands? Edit: ah quit foreground process, ignore me

Because it is the standard command to kill (i.e. send SIGINT) running programs in a terminal? E.g. ping, top, etc. all quit using Ctrl-C.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#55
post #29
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It literally everytime you boot the first screen tells you how to quit and get help. So..read the screen that comes up Everytime? If you try Ctrl c it tells you it's :q.

dev: That just typed ':q' into the text area me: Hit escape first, then :q dev: Oh, then why doesn't say escape then :q me: welp

Cute, but no. When you enter insert mode, the "welcome screen" disappears. So if you can see the instruction telling you to type ':quit', then typing :quit will work.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#57
post #41

I'm somewhat amazed but mostly amused that the Vim developers care so little about user experience that they continue to ignore that people have trouble with exiting their tool and refuse to adapt to a more expected convention for exiting it.

Why solve a "problem" that no actual user of the software has? It's not an iphone, it isn't meant for use by the general public. Use nano if that's what you want. There's no reason to fuck up vim for people who actually use it to help the people who don't .

Many of us get dropped into vim by accident.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#58
post #28
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine you don't know that. Now try to exit vim.

Ok, so anyone with any terminal experience but no vim experience would press -c. Then, the program tells them "Type :quit to exit Vim" And if the user is capable of reading, they shouldn't have any problem. If they don't know about ctrl-c, they shouldn't be using a terminal editor.

Try actually following those instructions. They don't work. There is a step missing, and you may get warnings even if you know to hit escape first.

Re: Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim

#60
post #12

I'm somewhat amazed but mostly amused that the Vim developers care so little about user experience that they continue to ignore that people have trouble with exiting their tool and refuse to adapt to a more expected convention for exiting it.

It literally everytime you boot the first screen tells you how to quit and get help. So..read the screen that comes up Everytime? If you try Ctrl c it tells you it's :q.

vim myfile.txt opens myfile.txt, and literally does not show the splash screen.
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