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Accidently typed control-u and lost your input?[]

I've never experienced the particular problem mentioned in the tip, and the tip itself is expressed very poorly, so I didn't understand that it actually has a point.

It appears the tip concerns a defect in Vim, namely, if you type in text in insert mode and press Ctrl-U, you lose what you entered, and undo is stupidly unhelpful.

I suppose the tip could be completely rewritten to make it clear what it's about, and a more helpful solution to the problem could be provided, and the typo in the title could be fixed.

I was thinking for some doubtful tips that I might post on the vim_use mailing list, and solicit opinions and help on fixing (or deleting) a particular tip. This tip would be a good candidate for that.

OTOH I would be quite happy to just delete this tip so we can concentrate on more helpful material, but if anyone wants to fix it, please do so.

--JohnBeckett 10:54, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Asking for opinion/help on the main mailing list sounds like a very good idea. We don't need to fix every thing right now as there are a lot of other tips that can be fixed. However, as the tip has been found useful, deleting it does not seem like a good thing to do: the tip solves a problem. As a consequence, it deserves to be kept unless there is a better tip that addresses the same problem, but in more understandable terms.
--Luc Hermitte 12:12, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
I agree to Luc. I have setup a category and a boilerplate "dodgy" for such cases.
--bastl 15:00, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Create PayPal "Buy Now" Buttons from a CSV Buffer[]

I don't know why ipkiss flagged this for delete, but my reasons for supporting the idea are:

  • The tip is very specific to a particular need.
  • My guess is that the need is pretty rare, and is certainly not the sort of thing that Vimmers normally discuss.
  • It's hard to follow the tip because the particular need has masses of complex stuff which would only make sense to a very small number of people.
  • The tip is just not helpful for most readers.
  • We need to concentrate our efforts on tips that generally will be helpful.
  • I don't see how you could clean up the tip to make it more helpful (without a large effort). Would you put it in a PayPal category??
  • I'm a bit uneasy about the focus of the tip being for a commercial service (I thought it was spam at first).

--JohnBeckett 10:54, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

It looks to me like just another variation on the theme: "How can I generate/insert/expand text from a list of other things". It's the same kind of applications that the enum-to-switch_case converter I wrote for C. Thus, one of the categories would be Category:Automated_Text_Insertion (even if it is more about transformation here). The other one would be Category:HTML.
Could it be useful to others? I can't tell. On the first glance, I'd say no: this is just an example of how to use :substitute.
--Luc Hermitte 12:12, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
It is a general thing. John, you are right, it is not helpful to most readers, but does it matter? I would say no: If someday someone searches for paypal, he will find something and be happy. If not, who cares? I tag it dodgy and let's postpone the discussion, until the more valuable tips are fixed.
--bastl 15:17, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
I could write a tip about how to generate a resignation letter, given the name of the company and the resignation date (using :s///). Then I could write another tip about how to generate the code for a dynamic_cast in C++, from values in a line (using :s///). Then I could write yet another tip about how to generate SQL INSERT queries for my own database schema, from the values given in a csv file (using :s///). Etc...
Following your logic, there is a tiny chance that one day, someone else, somewhere, has a similar need. Would you still keep all these tips? For me, such tips hide the useful part (the use of :s///) among many details that would be of interest for very few people, if any. In all the other tips, we can easily find many tips making (a more clever) use of :s///, or even explaining it. We do not want to keep all the possible applications of the search and replace command!
More generally, do you want to highlight the idea at the core of a tip, or any of the possible applications of this idea? As a chinese proverb says: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime...
Of course, this doesn't mean that we shouldn't have practical examples of :s///. But a line has to be drawn somewhere, and IMHO this tip is way past the line, for all the reasons given by John.
Ipkiss 21:44, 26 July 2007 (UTC)


OK, then im overruled. Deleted. bastl 08:11, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Toggle off the line-number when enter on-line help[]

This tip concerns someone who:

  • Has used :set number to display line numbers.
  • Then displays Vim help.
  • Is using an obsolete version of Vim that shows line numbers in help.
  • Is using a screen limited to 80 columns.

That should be a very rare scenario. For most users, the tip is simply not helpful. If there are too many unhelpful tips, the genuinely useful tips will be missed.

I'm inclined to delete this sort of tip because it would take a bunch of effort to clean up, and the result would be very doubtful, and keeping the tip would degrade the signal-to-noise ratio of the tips.

As an alternative to deletion, maybe there could be some sort of template to insert a box saying that we aren't really proud of this tip, but we think we'll keep it for a while. However, if it hasn't been fixed within three months we think we'll delete it. That would be like Template:Deprecated which displays a 'deprecated' box and puts the tip in a deprecated category.

--JohnBeckett 11:56, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Great to see we have similar ideas :-) I tagged it dodgy.
--bastl 15:29, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Turn off per-filetype auto indentation[]

Please discuss whether this tip should be deleted in the comments at the bottom of the tip page (click the above header). --JohnBeckett 11:56, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Moved the discussion here.
--bastl 15:33, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Rationale for deleting this tip:

  • filetype plugin and filetype indent are off by default (unfortunately), as noted above
  • they are both recommended settings, which can improve a lot indenting and editing in general of files with such a filetype
  • if an indent file for a particular filetype is not wanted, it can be overridden by a custom ftplugin (see :help after). All the methods presented in this tip are dirty hacks...

Ipkiss 22:05, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, this seems to be a problem for some ppl, and I guess :help after is the right answer. I would keep it. bastl 09:02, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Bastl: I'm not sure what you mean. Do you think that the tip should be rewritten to explain the correct procedure for turning off per-filetype auto indentation? That is, pretty well all the current content would be replaced with an example based on :help after-directory? --JohnBeckett 11:27, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Same as above, I (personally) dont care so much about the signal to noise ratio. Perhaps the noise is useful for some ppl? and if it's a lot of content, there might be a hidden gem that we will delete to quick.
--bastl 15:33, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Even if you don't, users generally do care about noise. They don't want to dig in all the comments or in a twisted tip for the hidden gem. In this particular case it's even worse, some users had indeed a need to deactivate filetype indenting for a particular filetype, and the tip directed them to a bad solution (even suggesting to deactivate filetype plugin, which has nothing to do with this).
Of course, we could find a more appropriate title and replace all the content with a new tip, highlighting :help after. But then it's a new tip. Why keeping this one, except maybe as a reminder to create the other one?
BTW, if there was really a hidden gem, nothing prevents the original author to create a new tip, where the gem will hopefully be more visible :)
Ipkiss 22:07, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
I for my part learned something from that tip (the most from your arguments why the tip is useless :-) ) I reworked it, and think it's ok now.
--bastl 08:09, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Set window title[]

This tip is a duplicate of VimTip23, with no added value (as admitted by its author). Ipkiss 20:25, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

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