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7. UNIX-SPECIFIC QUESTIONS

stations?

7.1 How do I turn off the message ``Thanks for flying Vim'' on Unix

When using Vim in an xterm it renames the title of that window to ``Thanks for flying Vim'' on exit. Use ``:set notitle'' to stop this behavior.

7.2 How do I prevent from suspending Vim?

Map Ctrl-Zto prevent the suspending. Here are some suggestions:

1. Make Ctrl-Zdo nothing:

map C-ZC-VC-V

2. Make Ctrl-Zstart a shell:

:map C-Z:shellCR

3. Make Ctrl-Zgive an error message:

:map C-Z:"suspending disabledCR

For the last example, the double quote is necessary in order to keep themessage on the status line.

7.3 How can I make Vim faster on a Unix station?

The GUI support in Vim 4.0 can slow down the startup time noticeably. Until Vim supports dynamic loading, you can speed up the startup time by compiling two different versions of Vim: one with the GUI and one without the GUI and install both. Make sure you remove the link from $bindir/gvim to $bindir/vim when installing the GUI version, though.

If screen updating is your problem, you can run Vim in screen. screen is an ascii terminal multiplexer. The latest version can be found at ftp://ftp.uni-erlangen.de:/pub/utilities/screen.

7.4 In Unix, how do I make Vim more colorful?

You can change some termcap values to send to the screen the proper codes to change some colors (providing your terminal supports color). Here are some examples of how to do this if you do ``:h unix'' but it seems as though they don't work all that well. But they help to understand what has to be done:

:set t_me=Esc [0;1;36m " normal mode (undoes t_mr and t_md) :set t_mr=Esc [0;1;33;44m " reverse (invert) mode :set t_md=Esc [1;33;41m " bold mode :set t_se=Esc [1;36;40m " standout end :set t_so=Esc [1;32;45m " standout mode :set t_ue=Esc [0;1;36m " underline end :set t_us=Esc [1;32m " underline mode start

Quoting Tony Nugent:

You can do some interesting things by putting ansi colour sequences into those capabilities. What's given here are just examples, and some combinations don't work very well. You need to discover for yourself a configuration that works. For example, end-modes need to switch everything back to normal as well as turn things off.

Just load  /.vimrc, play around with the values, save it and then see what it looks like by sourcing it (:so  /.vimrc).

Don't forget to do things like ``:/Ctrl-D '' and ``:map'' to see all the different effects. And don't forget about the ``:set highlight='' string to fine-tune how the different capabilities are used.

BTW, something like this also works for DOS and Win32 Vims! So it should also work well with windows or any ansi- and vt100- compatible terminal mode capable of displaying colours (which includes all colour pc's). It doesn't work so well in plain old xterm's (YMMV - your milage may vary).

You can find a list of terminal codes here:

http://www.cs.utk.edu/~shuford/terminal_index.html ftp://cs.utk.edu/pub/shuford/terminal/ ftp://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/DEC/termcaps


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