Various feedback

Question

I recently revamped my Vifm configuration, after reading parts of the manual and reviewing vifmrc files posted by other users on GitHub. Vifm is one of my favorite tools, so I thought I should share some feedback. It's all very minor.

• By default both <Tab> and <Space> both switch to the active pane. Preserving <Space> for this task and using <Tab> to enter view mode might make more sense (right now <S-Tab> is used for this).

• The default vifmrc considers *.ts to be video files. Because of this, I didn't get a preview for TypeScript files as Vifm recognized it as binary data.

• When pressing s in Vifm (:shell) I was often confused when I wanted to return to Vifm: should I press C-d or enter vifm? Luckily, I encountered nesting detection in your dotfiles. In my opinion, this would be a sane default.

• In the GitHub issues I stumbled upon the new navigation mode. I wanted to use this on my workstation, but I didn't feel like installing v0.13 on multiple servers. I share the same configuration on workstations and servers, but the servers running v0.12 would throw an error when encountering commands like amap. I managed to solve this by creating a variable
  let $VIFM_VERSION = system('vifm --version | head -n1 | grep -Po "\.\K\d+"') and wrapping commands like amap inside if $VIFM_VERSION >= 13. I don't know if there was a better way to solve this issue. Maybe such a variable could be provided out of the box.

• Speaking about the (super fast) navigation mode, I am using anoremap <c-n> <c-y><esc>n/<c-p><c-y> and anoremap <c-p> <c-y><esc>N/<c-p><c-y> to jump to the next/previous match, but it causes some visual distortion (flickering).

• After some trial and error, I managed to differentiate <C-i> and <Tab>. Mapping keys like <C-S-end> or <S-insert> didn't work, noremap <F11> :histnext<CR> did the trick eventually. Not a big deal, but a bit confusing.

• I noticed mark d expand($DOTFILES) in someone else's dotfiles, but this causes this error for me: Expected full path to the directory?

Thanks a lot for Vifm!

Answer 1

By default both <Tab> and <Space> both switch to the active pane. Preserving <Space> for this task and using <Tab> to enter view mode might make more sense (right now <S-Tab> is used for this).

The behaviour depends on 'cpoptions'. "Proper" behaviour of Tab is to go back in navigation history. It switches pane for compatibility. Although it might be changed in sample vifmrc for new installations as I personally find it irritating due to mismatch of behaviour in Vim and Vifm and that might not be just me.

The default vifmrc considers *.ts to be video files. Because of this, I didn't get a preview for TypeScript files as Vifm recognized it as binary data.

This ambiguous extension can actually be dropped there, now that mimetypes are listed as well. Will do it.

When pressing s in Vifm (:shell) I was often confused when I wanted to return to Vifm: should I press C-d or enter vifm? Luckily, I encountered nesting detection in your dotfiles. In my opinion, this would be a sane default.

Unfortunately, it's not 100% reliable because environment variables are inherited by all child processes, not just shells, and this can generate false positives.

In the GitHub issues I stumbled upon the new navigation mode. I wanted to use this on my workstation, but I didn't feel like installing v0.13 on multiple servers. I share the same configuration on workstations and servers, but the servers running v0.12 would throw an error when encountering commands like amap. I managed to solve this by creating a variable
let $VIFM_VERSION = system('vifm --version | head -n1 | grep -Po "\.\K\d+"') and wrapping commands like amap inside if $VIFM_VERSION >= 13. I don't know if there was a better way to solve this issue. Maybe such a variable could be provided out of the box.

Thanks, I'll think about adding v:version. Need to make sure it can be compared to version in a predictable way.

Speaking about the (super fast) navigation mode, I am using anoremap <c-n> <c-y><esc>n/<c-p><c-y> and anoremap <c-p> <c-y><esc>N/<c-p><c-y> to jump to the next/previous match, but it causes some visual distortion (flickering).

It will be implemented as a builtin for both search and navigation. I've updated my comment to add <silent> which reduces flickering (command-line still flickers a bit).

After some trial and error, I managed to differentiate <C-i> and <Tab>. Mapping keys like <C-S-end> or <S-insert> didn't work, noremap <F11> :histnext<CR> did the trick eventually. Not a big deal, but a bit confusing.

Can't do anything with that as both keys generate the same code.

I noticed mark d expand($DOTFILES) in someone else's dotfiles, but this causes this error for me: Expected full path to the directory?

It can't work, it should be:

execute 'mark d' fnameescape($DOTFILES)

Or rather :mark should expand environment variables. (Will be part of v0.14.)

Thanks a lot for Vifm!

Thanks for your feedback!

Comments

Thanks for your answers.

It will be implemented as a builtin for both search and navigation.
I've updated my comment to add which reduces flickering
(command-line still flickers a bit).

Going to the next match seems to work very well now (except for some minor flickering in the command line indeed). Going to the previous match I experience a bit more flickering, it seems like sometimes it jumps 2 matches back and the immediately goes one forward. But this new mode is a nice addition anyway.

execute 'mark d' fnameescape($DOTFILES)

This works as expected indeed.