Vim: sane & fast auto completion and common issues

Using vim’s autocompletion feature is mostly fine, but there are some considerations:

• Problem: using foldmethod=syntax and completion at the same time leads to VERY slow completion in larger files:
  • Solution: Disable folding when in insert mode:
• Problem: completion results are irrelevant/unsatisfying
  • Use ctags (exuberant-ctags package) to generate all necessary information. Ctags will put a file named tags in your project’s root directory, which include all information about defined functions, classes. For the completion inside a Rails-Project, ctags can also be used to complete all functions from all used gem (also works with RVM). If you are using supertab, than choose your standard-completion method with :SuperTabHelp and set it to “tags”.
• Problem: When working in subprojects, none of the functions from the parent-project are completed, e.g. developing Drupal-modules and including Drupal-core tags-file.
  • solution: set a recursive lookup for the ‘tags’ file
• Problem: Vim does split the keyword by character “-“ (or character X whatever). For instances, I’d like vim to see “post-title” as one word in Vim’s sense (completion, selection, movements)
  • Solution: set iskeyword as you like
• Problem: have to type a file-name
  • Solution: use Ctrl + X, Ctrl + F to complete filenames, relative to Vim’s current workdir. See :SuperTabHelp for a list of all possible completion options.

Here the related vim-config/vimrc part:

" http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Keep_folds_closed_while_inserting_text
autocmd InsertEnter * if !exists('w:last_fdm') | let w:last_fdm=&foldmethod | setlocal foldmethod=manual | endif
autocmd InsertLeave,WinLeave * if exists('w:last_fdm') | let &l:foldmethod=w:last_fdm | unlet w:last_fdm | endif

" ,rt -> regenerate tags, including objects/functions from installed gems
" http://effectif.com/vim/using-ctags-with-bundler-gems
map <leader>rt :!ctags --extra=+f --languages=-javascript --exclude=.git --exclude=log -R * `rvm gemdir`/gems/* `rvm gemdir`/bundler/gems/*<CR><C-M>

" set tags-lookup-path
set tags=tags;/

" do not regard "-" as word seperator (css Files!)
set iskeyword+=-