thanks nathan,

nathan meyers writes:
> :syntax off

> You can put it in your ~/.vimrc (without the colon) to make
> it sticky.  You might even find the logic there that that's
> turning it on in the first place.

well, i have no .vimrc, (could have created one, of course),
but i put it in .exrc (with which i've been living for nearly
20 years) and it worked just fine.  thank you very much.

but here's another one.  as i was typing this message, vimrc
was highlighted in olive drab!  i looked over my env variables
and saw nothing likely looking.  after perusing the vim man
pages, i looked in directory /usr/share/vim/vim61/syntax and
saw a zillion .vim files, evidently for editing different
kinds of programs, files, etc.  renamed syntax directory to
syntax.sav and the problem went away.  but in that directory
there are files syntax.vim and nosyntax.vim for turning on and
off the color nonsense.  vi -r then barfed because the syntax
directory wasn't there.

whatever happend to the kiss principal?  sometimes it's very
difficult to avoid progress.

thanks for your help.

dan

j. daniel moylan
84 harvard ave #2
brookline, ma 02446-6202
617-232-2360 (tel)
810-454-1823 (fax)
jdm@moylan.info
moylan.info