Re: Hel with vim-addon-manager -a

On Jan 7, 2012, at 3:14 PM, Marc Weber wrote:

Excerpts from Eric Weir's message of Sat Jan 07 19:13:15 +0100 2012:

I believe the command needed is ActivateAddons {}.

So how does this "ActivateAddons {}" tell VAM which plugin you want?

It doesn't. And I didn't mean to suggest that I thought it did. Actually, I described what I did in my attempt to execute the command, i.e., "ActivateAddons {vim-orgmode}," and the result I got.

How did you read the docs causing this conclusion?
{name} is to substituted by the real name. You can also try tab
completion.:

:ActivateAddons org<c-d>
And you'll get a list including vim-orgmode without {}.

Thus do this only:
ActivateAddons vim-orgmode

Since first becoming interested in vim-addon-manager I have read through and referred to the documentation numerous times. I don't mean to give offense. I really like VAM and am grateful to you for creating it. That said, the VAM documentation is like much of the VIM-related documentation. It largely assumes you know how to do what seeking help from it in doing. It does not address the naive user. 

For example, the example of the ActivateAddons command above is the first example I have seen. There is no example in the documentation. In section 3.1 on commands the form of the command is given as "ActivateAddons {name} ..." To me that says I should use the curly brackets. Likewise there is no example of the actual use of the command.  

All that said, seeing your example, I gave it a try. VAM found the plugin and it looked like it was installing it. A lot of code and text went whizzing by pretty fast. At the end however I got this message:

Error detected while processing function vam#install#Install..vam#install#Checkout.

.vam#utils#Unpack..vimball#Vimball:

line 10

(Vimball) The current file does not appear to be a Vimball! 

I checked the plugin folder in the directory and found only an empty "archive" folder.

A related connection. In section 5 there is an example of how to add plugins to your .vimrc using the "set runtimepath" command. I have not done that for any of the other plugins I've installed with VAM. I do have the code recommended in item 3 of section two, and their names do appear in the "call vam#ActivateAddons...." line of that code. I.e.:

" commenting try .. endtry because trace is lost if you use it.

          " There should be no exception anyway

          " try

            call vam#ActivateAddons(['taskpaper', 'vimwiki'], {'auto_install' : 0})

            " pluginA could be github:YourName see vam#install#RewriteName()

          " catch /.*/

          " echoe v:exception

          " endtry

IIRC, I put them there. Would that be correct or did VAM do it? What is the reason for the explanation of how to add plugin names to your .vimrc?

In that connection I don't understand how the vim-addon-manager-known-repositories plugin is to be used.

the VAM code takes care about it. Everything does work automatically -
when using the SetupVAM sample function, see docs.

The SetupVAM function code is what I mentioned putting in my .vimrc above. It's there because the documentation said to put it there. I do not entirely understand what it's doing. I certainly would not have understood that it has anything to do with known repositories or the known repositories plugin. 

I am not stupid. In graduate school I aced advanced symbolic logic. I am just not a programmer.

Again, I'm very grateful to you for creating VAM. But as I said in my initial post, I need help in getting help from the documentation. And I'm grateful for your help with that, too.

Sincerely,

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric Weir
Decatur, GA  USA
eeweir@bellsouth.net

"Imagining the other is a powerful antidote to fanaticism and hatred." 

- Amos Oz