Defining the settings for the vim help file

Question

With opened vim help file the command

:set conceallevel=0

works fine and e.g. the "|" signs for the internal links are showed as expected, but unfortunately, it remains not permanent, i.e., jumping to another link hides the "|" signs again.

As I put this setting into my .vimrc as into my .gvimrc too to make it permanent, there is no effect at all, while other settings from my config files are applied properly.

So are there any local definitions for the vim help file?

Perhaps I didn't look for this deeply enough, but because I think it is from some importance for other people too, I've got the courage to ask this question here ;-)

I really appreciate any suggestions...

(Tested with VIM 7.4 from 2013 August 10 from the ubuntu repository)

Answer 1

Yes, as with most filetypes, Vim has help-specific settings that override your generic settings.

You can use :verbose to see where an option was set:

:verbose set conceallevel?

The default ftplugin for help files is where conceallevel is set:

$VIMRUNTIME/ftplugin/help.vim

To override that setting, create ~/.vim/after/ftplugin/help.vim and put this line:

setlocal conceallevel=0