Bug#441111: vim: please set syntax=on by default on the gral config file

[James Vega]

On Fri, Sep 07, 2007 at 05:16:23PM +0200, Tatiana de la O wrote:
> James Vega wrote:
> > On Thu, Sep 06, 2007 at 10:46:20PM +0200, Marie 3Jane Marie-France TEssier-Ashpool wrote:
> >> There are almost no moments in which 
> >> you will not want the syntax, and 
> >> those moments are lived by people 
> >> that knows how to edit a config file.
> > 
> > If you're referring to simply having syntax highlighting enabled, we've
> > chosen not to enable it by default. 
> 
> Why?

Because we haven't felt the need to deviate from Vim's defaults in this
respect.

> Has that decision been revisited lately? More and more people is
> using the system, so the usecases may vary...

Which is why Vim is relatively easy to customize.  The hard part is
learning which commands/options to use but once that's known, the exact
same thing is used in the ~/.vimrc file.

> Is there a place in which me, as a user, can give an opinion about
> default options, and see what other users think? (I don't pretend to
> know everything abot config files anyway... maybe the reason is unkown
> to me and I also agree)
> 
> >  You can easily enable it by adding
> > "syntax on" to your ~/.vimrc file.
> 
> I know, but many people don't know about all this config files fiddling,
> that's why I would like to have it enabled by default.  People that
> don't know how to enable-disable or that vim has syntax even.

While that may be true, I find it unlikely that users will get very far
with Vim without learning at least the basics about Vim.  The suggested
method is by going through vimtutor, which ends up telling the user how
to create their ~/.vimrc file using vimrc_example.vim.  If they follow
the suggestions in vimtutor, they're even directed to a portion of the
help that explains all of the example vimrc (including enabling syntax
highlighting).

When setting our system-wide defaults, we try to stay as close to the
Vim defaults as possible.  The few changes we make are fairly mundane
and even so I think we are currently changing too much.

James
-- 
GPG Key: 1024D/61326D40 2003-09-02 James Vega <jamessan at debian.org>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 197 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
Url : http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-vim-maintainers/attachments/20070908/6365edfb/attachment.pgp