Re: Mystery vim7 versus vim6.4 - same term, different results

On Fri, 4 Mar 2011, howard Schwartz wrote:

> > What I meant was that Vim is now at version 7.3.138. You apparently
> > are using 7.3.0. This is probably OK--I do not see any bug fixes
> > related to screen drawing or special keys--but you are missing out on
> > a lot of bug fixes and minor feature additions
>
> Actually I've got version 7.3.43 with cream on windows. But I do not want the
> pain of trying to compile vim on a machine where I do not have root privileges
> and I do not know where the sysad people put needed files. The sunfreeware
> binaries will be fine.

You could
mkdir $HOME/local
and build with that as a prefix.
>
> > Are you telling me that none of Vim's runtime files are installed? If so I
> > would almost expect you to encounter problems.
>
> Specifically, the site has the runtime files for 6.3 installed in a wierd
> place -but they are there (/util6/SUNWspro/contrib/vim/share/vim/vim63/).
> I did install those for 7.3 in my friend's home directory under ~/vimfiles.
> But VIMRUNTIME and the other vim environment variables are undefined. There is
> only the traditional .exrc in $HOME, which vim finds by default.
>
> I do not see what `problems' I would encounter by not scripts and files. They
> are extra, and not necessary for the executable to function.

Suppose some features are handled more correctly by newer versions, but the
terminal software doesn't cope. With the .vimrc you could turn off features.
>
> For special tests, I do point VIMRUNTIME to the right places. It does not
> correct the terminal problem.
>
> > is what you really mean, "I have no config files"?
> > I.e. do you have no ~/.vimrc, no ~/.vim, AND no environment variables
> > set which affect Vim startup?
>
> Again - no vim related envirenment variables, one .exrc file in the home
> directory which all versions of vim read.
>
> > but your original email mentions that "the screen
> > display changes". What sort of changes do you see?
>
> With 6.4 keys and screen seem fairly normal with term=vt102. But with the same

Do you mean $TERM is set?
If you mean the lowercase variable, does it agree with $TERM?
What about the terminal emulator itself? What type is it set to?
Are there other VT102 entries you can use -- there used to be things
like VT100-nam for No Automatic Margins, and similar.
If timing is causing this, have a look at
:he slow-terminal
for some things to try.
Does using vim -X help at all?

> term and 7.3 -- all kinds of things go crazy. Motion keys insert text, and
> make the cursor jump to odd places, the j key writes the file to disk -- too
> many things to mention here.
>
> > Compare the output of the :version command from each Vim version.
>
> This is the most likely source of the problem. Of course 7.3 has gobbs of
> extra features including client-server, python, ruby etc. Most particularly,
> it is compiled with GTK2 GUI, while 6.4 is compiled without the gui. Im used
> to launching gvim when I have a gui, so I do not know what it means for the
> console vim to be compiled with a gui. But it may be doing graphics related
> things that confuse a text based console interface.
>
Hugh

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