Live data from Hacker News

The Ultimate Vim Distribution

vim.spf13.com

31–40 of 90 posts

Re: The Ultimate Vim Distribution

#31
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There can absolutely be improvement on some default Vim settings. 'hlsearch' should definetly be the default, and I think it is a crime that 'hidden' isn't. There are easily dozens of other examples. However I think these should be made defaults in Vim itself, not in some grabbag of stuff we hand new users on their way in. I think it is important that every Vim user knows exactly what ways their setup differs from th…

> 'hlsearch' should definetly be the default Not really. I often use (incremental) search just to move around, and I don't want the highlight to distract me, especially with a really common pattern. I would consider using it if the highlight disappeared immediately after the search is over, but as far as I know there is no such setting, so I only enable it from time to time. This just proves that it's really hard to…

Well, the highlighting doesn't start until the search is over (you've pressed enter). I use this to clear the highlighted results when I am done with them:

  nmap  :noh  
Maybe there is a way to make it automatically do that after searching with some sort of timeout. Not sure.

Re: The Ultimate Vim Distribution

#32
post #28

Installed it, but now I'm getting this error when starting vim: > E117: Unknown function: fugitive#statusline > E15: Invalid expression: fugitive#statusline()

please report this issue in Github. I'd be happy to help.. It sounds like fugitive is being triggered in a directory that isn't being tracked by git... but it would be better to continue the dialogue on Github.

OK, Great. I'll report it later on tonight.

Re: The Ultimate Vim Distribution

#33
Distributions like these are good for people who just need to use Vim, not necessarily for people who want to learn Vim. It's often better for people to add plugins and update their vimrc file as they learn Vim and figure out what their Vim style is.

This article helped me with my 2nd attempt to learn Vim: "Your first vimrc should be nearly empty" http://vimuniversity.com/samples/your-first-vimrc-should-be-...

Re: The Ultimate Vim Distribution

#34
post #8
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In term sof new stuff that's true, but there are a lot of things that modern plugins provide that obsolete the traditional way of doing things. For instance, people using EasyMotion never have to worry about counting how many words ahead they're moving and then typing c69w or whatever. And likewise, there are some things that everybody should have in their .vimrc, like incremental search, and it doesn't make sense to…

There can absolutely be improvement on some default Vim settings. 'hlsearch' should definetly be the default, and I think it is a crime that 'hidden' isn't. There are easily dozens of other examples. However I think these should be made defaults in Vim itself, not in some grabbag of stuff we hand new users on their way in. I think it is important that every Vim user knows exactly what ways their setup differs from th…

Man, I hate incremental and hlsearch :)

I'd agree with you on hidden but... the Vim defaults are (generally) the most vi-like settings, which makes some amount of sense. At the very least it keeps people from squabbling about what should be the default.

OTOH, the default vimrc has a bunch of stuff turned on and tweaked depending on your platform. So that could be a good venue for turning on some of these new, Vim-only features. That may sound like splitting hairs, but I think there's at least a bit of difference between "on by default" and "set to on in the config mkvimrc creates".

Re: The Ultimate Vim Distribution

#36

> curl http://j.mp/spf13-vim3 -L -o - | sh I'm stunned that anyone would pipe from internet to shell. No SSL and redirecting just make it easier for the bad guy. It makes me angry that people are promoting this as an install method. Like suggesting your first name as a good password.

If you have any concerns there are also manual install instructions.

SSL is a good idea. I should absolutely switch over to that.

Re: The Ultimate Vim Distribution

#37
post #34
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There can absolutely be improvement on some default Vim settings. 'hlsearch' should definetly be the default, and I think it is a crime that 'hidden' isn't. There are easily dozens of other examples. However I think these should be made defaults in Vim itself, not in some grabbag of stuff we hand new users on their way in. I think it is important that every Vim user knows exactly what ways their setup differs from th…

Man, I hate incremental and hlsearch :) I'd agree with you on hidden but... the Vim defaults are (generally) the most vi-like settings, which makes some amount of sense. At the very least it keeps people from squabbling about what should be the default. OTOH, the default vimrc has a bunch of stuff turned on and tweaked depending on your platform. So that could be a good venue for turning on some of these new, Vim-onl…

Eh, my thought is that 'vi'/'vim -C' should remain conservative but that just 'vim' by itself should turn on the sensible stuff. Certainly 'hidden', if not the more cosmetic searching stuff ;).

Some of the defaults are just plain harmful to people trying to get started. 'nohidden' is awful if you try to use buffers without knowing about it, and I don't think I've ever met anyone who wasn't infuriated by 'backspace' defaulting to "".

I'm not so much a fan of the platform tweaks, since you can't expect each platform to make the same ones. If you learn on one and just assume those settings will be the same everywhere, it can be very annoying when you switch to another system only to discover that your .vimrc isn't getting you the same behavior. 'backspace' is a particularly egregious setting this happens for often I find. It would be better if all systems left backspace="", so that everyone knew to add it to their .vimrc's.

Re: The Ultimate Vim Distribution

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, I had problems trying to make it do something, but I forget what. I almost want to say it was git submodule related, but it was like a year or more ago.

If I'm not mistake, vundle doesn't use git submodules, pathogen does.

Pathogen just uses a directory tree. Some users decide to use git submodules in it.

Re: The Ultimate Vim Distribution

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious as to why you (or anyone) would prefer pathogen to vundle? Vundle just seems like pathogen except with less manual work.

Vundle is strictly better unless you automate your software updates and want to be able to update your vim plugins without having to launch vim to do so. Pretty tenuous but maybe some sysadmin-inclined people really prefer this.

You can update your bundles straight from the command line with:

vim +BundleInstall! +qall

Vim still opens but could be useful if you're trying to automate vim somehow.

Re: The Ultimate Vim Distribution

#40
post #24
post #11

I realize this is a different project, but since it looks similar: installing Janus was the worst decision I ever made while looking to improve my Vim experience. It actually made Vim worse , sometimes by just slowing things down, other times because of the lack of quality control in the bundled plugins. One plugin actually caused data loss many times – it completely froze the editor when a certain syntax pattern was…

This is my project. I was surprised to see it on HN today. It has a lot in common with Janus on the surface. IMO Janus is also a good project. Where it differs is spf13-vim is focused on cross platform dependency, keeping with vanilla vim feel and having no external dependencies (with the exception of git). My understanding on Janus is that it focuses on Ruby (spf13-vim supports Ruby well, but Python, JavaScript, PHP…

Thanks for spf13 -- I use it every day, on Mac and Linux, with Python.

I do have one persistent, annoying problem with it, though, since I've got you here -- inserting close braces/parens OFTEN doesn't work with whatever plugin you use for the auto-closing. How do I turn it off? I remember trying to get rid of it, and failing miserably.

Post reply on HN