Background

Inspired by $\rm \LaTeX$-Suite, I added some autocompletion mappings in my VIMRC last year.¹ Three months later, I saw the word “FileType” in Vim’s User Manual, and shortened these autocommand a little bit.² In my opinion, it’s incredibly amazing since I can type text at the speed of thought.

Problem

If I’ve finished editing an HTML file and open another $\rm \LaTeX$ file, then my insert mode mappings will interfere with those defined by $\rm \LaTeX$-Suite. How can I restrict my custom mappings to the current working buffer only?

Since I didn’t know how to describe this problem in words in February, I spent hours searching for webpages on Google, but got nothing. At that time, I had focus on my homework and exams, so I put this problem aside. As a GNU/Linux user, I adjust my wants according to what I know and what I can do, after accepting the fact that M$ Off* has no known plan to support the free operating system.

Last night, when I wrote a recent linklog about Vim’s auto indenting, I did some configurations on Vim. This reminded me of hte problem of setting up autocompletion for brackets. After writing over 150 blog posts in Vim, I realise the inconvenience without these keyboard shortcuts for autocompletion in the insert mode.

Solution

First, I glanced through the codeblocks in the cited posts in the first two footnotes. After that, I googled “autocmd group”, and found two sites very useful.

1. Vim inoremap for specific filetypes on Stack Overflow.

   <buffer> is the missing part of the autocommands.

2. Autocommand Groups on Learn Vimscript the Hard Way.

   au! avoids Vim to slow down after running :so $MYVIMRC. Therefore, I also added ! after the function MyDiff in my VIMRC on M$ Win* 7.³

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