The way you describe is how it worked in zope templates (allowing a 'no items here' text if there was nothing to iterate over in a list) - it was frustrating that the later python implementation was different.
" Workaround stupid defaults.vim behaviour
if filereadable("/usr/share/vim/vim80/defaults.vim")
source /usr/share/vim/vim80/defaults.vim
endif
let g:skip_defaults_vim = 1
" Disable stupid seeking to last position
autocmd! vimStartup BufRead
" Disable stupid mouse support
set mouse=