Vim Tips Wiki:New tips/200905

New tips May 2009

For each proposed new tip:

• Is it worth keeping as a separate tip?
• Should it be merged into an existing tip? Which?
• If it should be kept, is it ready for release? Which points need fixing? Should it be renamed?

Please edit this page (not the talk page) in the appropriate section below the following table.
Alternatively, comments can be posted on the mailing list.

Proposed new tip	Current consensus
Going to the nth-from-last window	Keep
Hide specific ToolBar buttons	-
Lines level control	-
Pasting from the Windows clipboard to native Cygwin Vim	Merged to VimTip1623
Using Vim with Loreto	Move to user subpage

Please add your comment (sign with ~~~~) below the appropriate heading. Use ---- between comments.

Going to the nth-from-last window

I've never experienced this problem, but it's nice info to have. Plus, Tony found it useful, I'm sure someone else will too. Keep. --Fritzophrenic 21:45, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

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Keep. We don't appear to have a related tip, although I could be persuaded to merge this new tip and 999 into 195 (195 Switching between files + 999 Maximize current window), with some new title and more content about the Ctrl-w and :wincmd commands. However, such a merge does not seem achievable soon, and I'm happy to welcome any tip by a good contributor to Vim or the wiki. I do wonder whether it might be better to drop the title (is it a likely search term?) and instead have a more generic title for a tip where we might hope to add more info on switching between windows. I can't think of anything at the moment, but may suggest something later. Anyway, keep is good. JohnBeckett 08:31, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

If you find a better name, by all means set it. At least the word "window" should IMHO be kept in it as a "likely search term" -- or is there a Category about that? -- And BTW, don't accept without reading everything that has my byline. I still goof oftener than I'd like to. --Tonymec 17:57, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Hide specific ToolBar buttons

Merge to VimTip89. In the tip, I have listed 89, 259, 420, 665 as being related. Now that I've had a look at them, I think I will merge them all, putting the results in 89. I'll keep all titles (omg I suppose including this new tip). JohnBeckett 10:40, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't know about that idea. This new tip is about customizing the toolbar by removing specific buttons. All the others seem to be about removing the toolbar entirely. If we have a tip about removing specific MENU items or specific menus in their entirety, I could see a merge to that one, but for this...what did you have in mind for the title/subject/layout of the combined "everything you needed to know about the GUI toolbar" tip? --Fritzophrenic 23:15, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I started thinking, but the only way I could proceed was to actually try a merge. When I finished (after quite a long time!), I decided that the result was quite good and so have put it in VimTip89. Please let me know if you are happy with that (89 is now a merge of this new tip + 259 + 420 + 665). The next step would be to work out what titles to use (and possibly make redirects like "Toolbar", "ToolBar", "Menu"). Possibly the existing title for 89 is ok, and we could just keep all titles (including the title of this new tip). JohnBeckett 04:33, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

I believe the combined tip is better. I've taken the liberty of changing Hide specific ToolBar buttons to a redirect in order to avoid forking of comments. --Tonymec 18:23, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Lines level control

This tip needs some work, but I think it can be worth keeping once the TODO items I just added are addressed. --Fritzophrenic 21:45, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Pasting from the Windows clipboard to native Cygwin Vim

Merged to VimTip1623 (the new tip recommended by Fritzophrenic). JohnBeckett 08:10, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Merge with Copying_to_the_Windows_clipboard_from_Cygwin_vim added in April. Rename to "Using the Windows clipboard in Cygwin Vim" --Fritzophrenic 17:06, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Using Vim with Loreto

Keep. This tip was initially weak and looked at just another "look at this plugin" tip, but it has since been cleaned up significantly to give a very nice example of integrating a useful tool with Vim. And, it looks great. --Fritzophrenic 17:08, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

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I am getting more irritable these days. I politely mentioned at User talk:Goj that the tip example seems to be a complex method of saying :s/should be/are/, and there has been no response. Also, on the tip page I noted that the html code needs to be removed (while the clever layout achieved is good, I do not see why we should set a precedent that encourages people to make up tricky code – particularly since Vim is a plain text editor, simple is good). Furthermore, while I am overwhelmed by the attractiveness of the tip, I do not find the pictures to be sufficiently helpful. Without some explanation of what we see and what we might realistically do, the tip is just a "here is yet another great tool" page (yes, I can make it out when I stare hard, but is this thing supposed to make complex regexps simple?).

I am inclined to move this to a subpage of the user pending further development (and maybe delete in a couple of months if no progress) because I do not want to have to make sense of a tip that looks wonderfully attractive but which essentially boils down to a dead simple substitute command. If anyone feels like taking the time to investigate Loreto and fix the tip so it does something worthwhile, please go for it (or explain to me what I am missing). Meanwhile, I'm inclined to park the tip, but could easily be talked into a delete. JohnBeckett 08:10, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

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I will preface this by saying I have never used Loreto or any similar tool that autogenerates regex, nor do I plan to. That being said, I know there is great demand for such tools. Loreto in particular looks like a very useful refactoring tool, allowing you to rapidly generate a regex to run to do things like swap the order of arguments to a function, rename variables having similar names according to a new naming pattern/convention, etc. The example given, while it could be done with a very simple ":s/should be/are" command, does a good job demonstrating the basic procedure for use. I think another more complicated example is in order that would demonstrate a real use case, for example you could rename the variables and rearrange the arguments, and potentially correct mismatches between the first and second argument in code such as the snippet shown on the blog post describing Loreto.

While you raise a valid point of this being just another "here's a great tool" page, I think that until there is an actual plugin that supports this functionality, it has a place on the wiki. I would be OK with moving it to a user subpage, but I don't think we should remove it, even after a long time with no updates. I'm still leaning toward "keep" on this one but a user subpage is an acceptable compromise.

--Fritzophrenic 21:54, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

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Hmm, I've had a slight change of heart. If this were a "Refactoring tools" tip, if someone other than the tool author had made the tip (I assume the Krzysztof.Goj on the google code project page is the same Goj as the tip author), or if Loreto were a well known tool (it doesn't seem to be) then I think a tip would be the way to go. As it stands, I think we should move this to a user subpage, but keep the old title as a redirect in case the author or other bloggers have linked to it. --Fritzophrenic 22:07, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Good. I put a message on the tip page in case Goj is watching that page. JohnBeckett 04:33, 8 August 2009 (UTC)