Hello,

I am trying to get vim syntax highlighting to work, but I am having some problems...
I first tried putting "syntax on" in my ~/.vimrc file, and then opening a .c source code
file to see the syntax highlighting, but there is no color. I have mutt and other things loading in my xterm that are in color, so it seems that my xterm supports color just fine.

I then tried typing ":syntax on" in vim, and I received this error:
Error detected while processing /usr/share/vim/vim63/syntax/syntax.vim:
line 42:
E216: No such group or event: filetypedetect BufRead

I was not able to find any results for this error on google...
I am using debian "testing" branch and vim version 6.3.13
dpkg -l | grep vim
ii vim 6.3-013+2 Vi IMproved - enhanced vi editor
ii vim-common 6.3-013+2 Vi IMproved - Common files

Any help would be great...
Thank you.
__
Donnie

make sure you have

/usr/share/vim/vim63/syntax
and that there is a c.vim file in that dir

Yes, I have the file /usr/share/vim/vim63/syntax/c.vim

Fix: re-install

The jist of it is to re-install vim. I saw this mentioned in an obscure IRC log archive and subsequently tried it myself. I can confirm that the re-install solution worked for me.

How to fix the problem on Debian:

sudo apt-get update ; sudo apt-get remove --purge vim vim-common vim-full vim-scripts ; sudo apt-get clean ; sudo apt-get install vim vim-common vim-full vim-scripts

If you aren't using Debian:

You should be. Ha ha.

--
Tommy Butler
Dot Simple, LLC

Thanks for the reply.

I believe this problem was later fixed by an "apt-get upgrade" that replaced the old files...

nope. not yet.

oh and by the way...

the fix won't work if you have KDE installed on your machine unless you uninstall KDE as well. I'm working on a fix for that myself, and I may write a patch if there's any interest.

--
Tommy Butler
Dot Simple, LLC
www dot dotsimple dotcom

Another Fix:

Edit the "runtimepath" variable in '/etc/vim/vimrc' to include '/usr/share/vim/vim63' or '.../vim64' according the the version installed by you.

Ref:
lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-vim-maintainers/2005-October/001327.html
Enjoy

- Mohan