Vim $EDITOR alternative priority too high

Bug #869069 reported by Ville Ranki
10
This bug affects 2 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
vim (Ubuntu)
Confirmed
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

Recently (In less than 2 weeks) vim has replaced Nano as the default $EDITOR in Ubuntu.

I don't want to start an editor war, but vim is not a suitable editor for
beginners. Nano is much better alternative as it is very simple and displays
key shortcuts always on screen. Those who really want to use vim can change the default
themselves easily.

$ sudo update-alternatives --config editor
There are 6 choices for the alternative editor (providing /usr/bin/editor).

  Selection Path Priority Status
------------------------------------------------------------
* 0 /usr/bin/vim.gtk 50 auto mode
  1 /bin/ed -100 manual mode
  2 /bin/nano 40 manual mode
  3 /usr/bin/emacs23 0 manual mode
  4 /usr/bin/vim.basic 30 manual mode
  5 /usr/bin/vim.gtk 50 manual mode
  6 /usr/bin/vim.tiny 10 manual mode

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: vim 2:7.3.035+hg~8fdc12103333-1ubuntu7
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-11.50-generic-pae 2.6.38.8
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-11-generic-pae i686
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Architecture: i386
Date: Thu Oct 6 14:00:36 2011
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: vim
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to natty on 2011-05-19 (139 days ago)

Revision history for this message
Ville Ranki (ville-ranki) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Changed in vim (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
James McCoy (jamessan) wrote :

Of the Vim packages, only vim-tiny is installed by default and it has a lower priority than nano. Choosing to install other editor packages implies that you know how to use them and won't be bothered by them now being the provider for editor.

If that's not true, then you can manually change the editor alternative to nano or set $EDITOR to sensible-editor (from the sensible-utils package) which will ask (and remember) what editor to use.

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