# Vim autoindenting broken? **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [March 14, 2006, 6:14pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/vim-autoindenting-broken/81791 "2006-03-14T18:14:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![jeff](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@jeff](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jeff)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2006, 6:14pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/vim-autoindenting-broken/81791/1 "2006-03-14T18:14:11Z")
Does anyone else find gVim 6.4 a bit unstable on Windows XP? It’s become my editor of choice since learning it recently but I’m noticing some peculiar behavior. Last night I spontaneously lost the “Edit in vim” context-menu option, at the same time as its autoindenting feature changed on its own. So I can confirm what’s going on, what options control the autoindenting? The behavior I want is for it to indent two spaces after I type something like x = Fred.new( indent like this. and hit Enter. What I’m seeing is that it indents to the point of the open parenthesis. x = Fred.new( indent like this. I’m not sure what options govern this or why it changed, because it was behaving properly yesterday and I haven’t altered the \_vimrc options. Thanks, Jeff ---
**Author:** ![jeff](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@jeff](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jeff)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2006, 9:37pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/vim-autoindenting-broken/81791/2 "2006-03-14T21:37:16Z")
Jeff C.man wrote: > something like > > I’m not sure what options govern this or why it changed, because it was > behaving properly yesterday and I haven’t altered the \_vimrc options. > > Thanks, > Jeff I have not tried 6.4, but I can say 6.3 is fine on XP. There hasn’t really been a new feature that I use in vim since 5.0, so I don’t care about having the latest. ~S ---
**Author:** ![jeff](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@jeff](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jeff)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2006, 5:47pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/vim-autoindenting-broken/81791/3 "2006-03-15T17:47:33Z")
Jeff C.man wrote: > something like > > I’m not sure what options govern this or why it changed, because it was > behaving properly yesterday and I haven’t altered the \_vimrc options. > > Thanks, > Jeff I don’t know about your situation, but the latter is what it does for me in both vim 6.2 and 6.4, on osx and linux respectively. I didn’t realize it was doing this, I seem to remember the former behavior, however I prefer the latter behavior so I’m not complaining. I’ve in fact wondered how to get it in the past. Not sure if this is a recent ruby-vim change or a recent vim change, but if a vim change it’s been around since 6.2 at least. ---
**Author:** ![jeff](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@jeff](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jeff)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2006, 4:15am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/vim-autoindenting-broken/81791/4 "2006-03-18T04:15:43Z")
Jeff C.man wrote: > Does anyone else find gVim 6.4 a bit unstable on Windows XP? It’s > become my editor of choice since learning it recently but I’m noticing > some peculiar behavior. Last night I spontaneously lost the “Edit in > vim” context-menu option, at the same time as its autoindenting feature > changed on its own. > I use vim 6.4 all day at work and haven’t noticed anything strange, the > edit in vim context menu is always there for me. > So I can confirm what’s going on, what options control the > autoindenting? If you look in your vim directory under program files, (in the vim64 folder I belive), you’ll see a directory entitled indent, (or something like that). There should be a file in there like ruby.vim. I’m pretty sure this is where the indentation for ruby is controlled from. > The behavior I want is for it to indent two spaces after I type > something like > > x = Fred.new( > indent like this. > > and hit Enter. I do this by inserting the lines set shiftwidth=2 set tabstop=2 set softtabstop=2 set expandtab in the aforementioned ruby.vim in the indent directory > What I’m seeing is that it indents to the point of the open parenthesis. > > x = Fred.new( > indent like this. > > I’m not sure what options govern this or why it changed, because it was > behaving properly yesterday and I haven’t altered the \_vimrc options. > > Thanks, > Jeff Hope this helps, Gary ---
**Author:** ![jeff](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@jeff](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jeff)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2006, 4:18am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/vim-autoindenting-broken/81791/5 "2006-03-18T04:18:24Z")
PS, this probably doesn’t matter, but I always insert those lines at the bottom of the file so they don’t get overridden by options that appear earlier in the file. Gary ---
**Author:** ![jeff](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@jeff](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jeff)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2006, 1:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/vim-autoindenting-broken/81791/6 "2006-03-18T13:50:03Z")
Thanks all, I’m not sure what happened with the context menus, reinstalling gVim did the trick. I do have another question about vim’s indenting in .rhtml files. I find that it tends to shift my lines to places I don’t want them, making it hard to keep by program and HTML blocks organized visually. I even turned off the auto- and smartindent options in rhtml files, but I still noticed the same behavior. Often I’ll be typing on a line and while I’m typing it will shift the line backward a tab stop. Any ideas on how to keep it from doing this? Thanks again, Jeff ---
**Author:** ![jeff](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@jeff](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jeff)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2006, 7:03am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/vim-autoindenting-broken/81791/7 "2006-03-18T07:03:55Z")
> I do this by inserting the lines > set shiftwidth=2 > set tabstop=2 > set softtabstop=2 > set expandtab > I generally prefer vim to gvim, but on dos I do go to gvim as it can be > quicker to get to than opening a monad shell or the like. I too put the > set directives at the bottom of the vimrc file, also important if you’re > going to turn your work over to clients or if you have others who edit > your files is to put important directives at the top of the file so > others don’t mess up your settings, this is the one that I like: # vim: set expandtab tabstop=2 shiftwidth=2 foldmethod=marker: That way it comes back to you the way you want it no matter which vimrc file it was edited under… Good Luck with vi, it’s served me well Alan