Re: Please fix: make Windows Vim use same files as unix. No reason not to and it's confusing in mixed envirionments.

On 13/10/11 01:47, Linda W wrote:
> Jürgen Krämer wrote:
>>> (at least when I launch from explorer...)...so if it finds my .vim and
>>> .gvim,
>>> why doesn't it find .vim/colors/xxxx.vim?
>>>
>>
>> did you change the 'runtimepath' option? On Windows the directory for
>> user-specific scripts is ~/vimfiles by default, not ~/.vim.
>>
> ---
> I don't set a runtime path. I'd expect it to work the same as on
> unix/linux.
> Why should windows be different?
>
> IMO, it should look for .vim first, and then any old-style compat
> name, but **not
> looking** for ~/.vim at all would seem to be a bug.
>
> Vim also doesn't seem to find

This is one of all those "Vim traditions" which remain because it is not
worth breaking upwards compatibility to change them.

On Unix-like systems, there is a tradition to put program config files
for all programs in a directory with a name starting with a period,
which would then be "hidden" by default.

On DOS-like systems, before LongFileNames were invented, you couldn't
have a file- or directory-name starting with a period. So ~/vimfiles was
established where ~/.vim was the Unix tradition, and also ~/_vimrc and
~/_gvimrc where Unix would use ~/.vimrc and ~/.gvimrc.

On systems with LongFileNames, Windows Vim still looks for .vimrc when
it couldn't find ~/_vimrc, and for ~/.gvimrc when it couldn't find
~/_gvimrc. Conversely on Unix. This is a courtesy to double-boot etc.
users. But these are just one file each, and read only once each, at
startup. Adding an additional 'runtimepath' directory might make every
runtime script lookup more sluggish, for little advantage.

Platform-hopping Vim users should know (and, like everything else about
Vim, it is documented, in this case at :help 'runtimepath') that user
scripts are placed under ~/.vim/ on Unix and under ~/vimfiles/ on
Windows. Beware though, that _system-wide_ scripts not distributed with
Vim belong under $VIM/vimfiles on all systems, even on Unix.

On a double-boot system, where soft links are easier to manage from the
Unix side, and where the Linux kernel can read vfat filesystems but the
Windows kernel cannot make head or tail of an ext2, ext3, ext4 or reiser
filesystem, you could have your /etc/fstab mount your vfat partition
somewhere, and then make ~/.vim on the Unix side a soft link to what
would be seen as ~/vimfiles when running on the Windows side. In that
case, don't forget that Windows Vim can source Unix-format scripts (with
LF-only ends of lines) but Unix vim cannot source Dos-format scripts
(with CR-LF), so all those "common" scripts would need to use Unix
'fileformat'.

Best regards,
Tony.
--
I love this fucking University, and this University loves fucking me.

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