Re: Changing the defaults with Vim 8

On 2016-07-24, Bram Moolenaar wrote:
> Vim has always been conservative about the default option values.
> Without any .vimrc the default is 'compatible'. That's nice for people
> who rely on the old Vi. But how many of these still exist? I expect
> nearly all Vim users to want 'nocompatible', thus create a .vimrc ASAP.
>
> What has stopped me from changing this is the unexpected change. Many
> users will notice that Vim suddenly behaves differently. Some may be
> upset. The release of Vim 8.0 might be the best point in time to do
> this. If we do this.
>
> Besides making 'nocompatible' the default, there are a few options that
> should probably be on by default. Currently these are in
> $VIMRUNTIME/vimrc_example.vim. Most of these only have a visual effect
> or slightly change how editing works. You will notice this right away.
> The ones that have unexpected effects should be avoided.
>
> If someone wants to start in the old way, the -C flag should be used:
> vim -C
>
> If someone wants to start with 'nocompatible', but not all of the new
> option values, a .vimrc would be needed to change the settings. This is
> the most common and also most tricky part. Assuming that the user will
> want most of the new option values, but not all, he should be able to
> revert to the old value. For options that is easy. But including the
> matchit plugin is not easy to revert.
>
> What we can probably always do:

[...]

> Comments?

I think that for all the reasons you have given over the years,
changing the default behavior or default option values is a bad
idea.

I'm not sure what problem you're trying to solve.

Experienced users of Vim have already tweaked their vimrc files with
their preferred settings. Changing the defaults is not going to
help them.

The Windows installer already creates a default system _vimrc in
$VIM which is used until a user creates their own ~/_vimrc. The
system _vimrc could be changed to use whatever options values you
think would be better. New users will get the new option values.
Existing users will keep their existing option values.

Linux users usually start with the Vim package for their
distribution. Fedora-derived distributions and Ubuntu-derived
distributions at least provide system vimrc files with the option
values those package maintainers think are best. So those users
already get "better" initial option values.

Many Linux users build their own Vim. These users are usually
experienced enough to have a vimrc that sets their preferred option
values. For those users that are not so experienced, you could
change "make install" to look for ~/.vim/vimrc, and if it doesn't
already exist, create one that has your idea of better initial
settings.

I understand that Vim could be made more useful and appealing to new
users with different default settings, but putting those settings in
a configuration file (such as $VIM/_vimrc on Windows or $VIM/vimrc
on Unix if not already present) could solve that problem without
changing the actual default settings or breaking existing users'
expectations or configurations.

Regards,
Gary

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