You do not want "filetype off" A minor quibble: you might want "filetype off" temporarily, if you use Pathogen (which the poster does). Pathogen needs to run b

You do not want "filetype off" A minor quibble: you might want "filetype off" temporarily, if you use Pathogen (which the poster does). Pathogen needs to run before the filetype plugin is turned on, and due to the way some distros work (Debian and its children, primarily, I think), this requires you to start your .vimrc this way[1]: filetype off call pathogen#runtime_append_all_bundles() call pathogen#helptags() " Later... filetype plugin indent on Since I work both with Debian and OSX, I just use that as a shared .vimrc set-up. As a general rule, though, you are right that you want it turned on normally. [1] http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2332 http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2332