Vim improvements

These are things I think Vim needs improving on. Maybe I’ll fix them some day.

• Next section matching should be changed to matching the next line that is on the same alignment level. Would be useful to select environments in LaTeX

• Faster regex matching

• A latex IDE that is minimal (doesn’t clutter your maps) but provides solid functionality for compiling, viewing, indentation and error parsing. I have a set up that nearly does this.

• There is a very subtle bug in this script related to how it finds filenames. See this line of the pdftex error output. The (... is interpreted as though the filename is .. because the standard format for the filename is (./fileName. I would fix it but I’m not too familiar with gawk.

• (Actually maybe this is because I wasn’t in insert mode…) The auto indent paste hack sometimes chops off the first few characters sometimes. This is the hack, put this in your .vimrc:

inoremap <special> <expr> <Esc>[200~ XTermPasteBegin()
function! XTermPasteBegin()
  set pastetoggle=<Esc>[201~
  set paste
  return ""
endfunction
let &t_SI .= "\<Esc>[?2004h"
let &t_EI .= "\<Esc>[?2004l"

And now you will never need to type :set paste when pasting a large body of code again. It’s almost voodoo.

• Ability to use the repeat number feature for both inline operations and multiline operations. E.g. typing 2>> indents two lines by one indent to the left. There should be an option like -2>> to indent one line twice.

• Undo diff (undojoin?)

• Case insensitivity for filename completion when using :e filename. Better filename tab completion, e.g. don’t complete to buffers that are already open. Maybe even add an option to not autocomplete files with .swp or .swo files as they are probably open elsewhere

• Not requiring a space prepending a string which you want to filename complete (^X^F)

• I don’t understand why I should have to put nnoremap cw dwi in my .vimrc

• The repeat operation applied to J in normal mode applies one less repeat than I expect

• Have a way of storing previous commands, so . can be modified so older commands can be called

• When opening giant files, the numbering pane on the left is set to the maximum size of the largest line no. This could be made be more efficient.

• Create a plugin that adds shortcuts for mathematical manipulations more easily. E.g. Ctrl-A adds to the next number (unless a minus sign precedes it). More shortcuts could be added to subtract and add regardless of a preceding minus sign. Also, float support would be good, but complex.

• Changing colorschemes is not smooth. E.g. make default badwolf, change to koehler and then change back to badwolf. Then visual mode retains the appearance of koehler.

• The rules that govern how the numbered registers work are inconsistent:

Taken from this website

• Good method to prevent breaking of chain for a normal mode map when instruction fails

• Option to have non literal remaps, e.g. if we have nnoremap -o 4o, then if you type 2-o, you get 24 new lines, when you might have expected eight.

• Fixing all the small waits due to maps, e.g. pressing Esc in visual mode

• Using the up/down arrows in insert mode to move across lines does not preserve column position when passing across the end of a line

• Sometimes the position of the status bar is too high, but is corrected when you try and scroll

• and completion in the command line bar - especially for search and replace!
• Show all spelling errors in document in one list so one can quickly see which ones are actual errors (Edit: this has been done - http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=3844. Also need to install http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=4433 for this to work). Also a good error detection scheme for .tex files