I have several cpp source files in tabs in vim. I would like to have another tab with command prompt in order to run make. I open net tab , run sh and now I have console. But how to move from this console to other tabs? If I press ctrl+page up I have garbage in console and no tab change. How to move to another text tab when staying in console tab?
As I said, vim 8 or neovim both have an terminal emulator in it.
Since you are using vim 7 here are some other ways:
Tmux as #wizzup mentioned is perfect for this use-case. I think it is the most used Terminal-Multiplexer and extremly mighty. It is complex in comparison but since you are using vim, a steep learning curve should not be a killer point. However there are a few cavehats but you will find thousands of articles to solve them.
GNU Screen is an alternative to tmux, I have no experience with it, but should be usable pretty good with vim too.
With them you can use something like this Plugin which allows you to use the terminal in vim itself. However I haven't tested it but it seems to be rather groomed.
So, I am obsessed with Vim. I use vi mode everywhere - in all the editors and IDEs that support it. I use it it my browser (vimium, wasavi). I use 'hjkl' navigation everywhere thanks to awesome Karabiner. I use vi mode in my terminal via iTerm under zsh. Long time ago I found this little trick that changes cursor shape in the terminal depending of what mode you're currently in.
Now, although it perfectly works for iTerm, sadly it doesn't work in OS X's builtin terminal. I couldn't care less about that, except it also doesn't work in my favorite WebStorm. I thought I could trick it and instead of changing cursor's shape I could try tweaking its color. Still didn't work.
Please guys, help me to find a way to tweak cursor in IDEA's Terminal.
Thanks!
p.s.: Some may suggest to change the prompt depending the mode, but honestly I don't like that. I still believe there's a way to change cursor shape or color. Prob. just need to find the right escape sequence.
Unfortunately it looks like Intellij terminal draws it's own cursor without respect to bash or zsh settings.
Note I'm assuming community and pro editions of Intellij use the same terminal plugin
You can see the Terminal plugin source here
The terminal plugin uses Jediterm, a Java based terminal emulator written by JetBrains
Most of the drawing of the terminal window is handled in TerminalPanel.java and has a nested class called TerminalCursor
From the TerminalCursor class you can see that Java Graphics is used to draw boxes for regular cursors and blinking cursors.
Code that draws a rectangle for the cursor
I'm still not sure how the unfocused cursor is drawn since it's just an outline, and I can't find a handler for lost focus on the frame.
You can change the terminal cursor shape from the dialogue below:
Now, this is a lot prettier to work with:
I am aware that the mousefocus option is only supposed to work in gVim. But I was wondering, if it's possible to have the console Vim switch to different windows in response to mouse clicks, would it be not possible to easily add following mouse movement to it, too?
I'm an xmonad user, I love the focus following the pointer feature, I do a lot of pdf viewing and browsing while writing in Vim, and I'd be so much happier if I didn't have to keep mentally switching back and forth between two different types of focus changing.
If that's completely not possible, I guess opening new Vim windows (as with :split) in new instances of the terminal is no easier to do?
It would not be at all simple to add this. Using the mouse within the terminal works by vim sending control codes to the terminal requesting that mouse actions be sent as part of the input stream. Terminals only report clicks not changes in the pointer position, so vim has no way of knowing where the mouse is.
With major changes it would likely be possible for a vim with X support to get pointer activity directly from the X server, but that would likely be reported by pixel rather than by character so further work would need to be done before it could determine which vim window is currently under the pointer.
set mouse=a
should do the trick but it will probably depend on your terminal emulator. See :help 'mouse'.
This works for Windows 7/Cygwin 32bit mintty/vim 7.3: (I DO NOT use gvim!)
Having installed this: http://ehiti.de/katmouse/, I can scroll the window under my cursor without having to have clicked to select a window, click-selecting of single vim-windows works, too. It does not pull the vim window to the foreground, if another window overlaps it, if that is what you desire. Still it can be scrolled without click-selecting it first.
So:
Check if there exists a software paket for your distribution, that implements your desired mouse behavior on the OS level. When this works for my self-compiled vim in cygwin, it might very well work with console vim on linux, too.
This post here serves as evidence, that it is possible at all, that is the reason this was not made a comment. When I am on linux again I will investigate this further and update this post, but that might take a while.
On set mouse=a: The vim help states you a need a terminal capable of handling mouse inputs, further information can be found here. :help ttymouse might also be helpful, i.e. if you have a xterm-compliant console, but :help term is set to something else.
UPDATE: (Freshly installed Fedora 19 with packages, no self-compiled stuff.)
Fedora 19 + se mouse=a = scrolling in single console vim window with several buffers opened next to each other independently works, too. Window manager used is LXDE.
Something extremely weird is happening when I open files in vim, and I can't remember doing anything that would have caused it.
Weird behaviors include:
no text being visible until I highlight it in visual mode, at which point it is visible from thereon. ":redraw!" does not make anything visible.
line 1 missing
occasionally the cursor appears one line below where it is editing
statuses become permanent and scroll up from the bottom, rather than just redrawing at the bottom
the vim text not extending to the bottom of the vertically maximized window
I lack the reputation to post screenshots but I'll happily provide any other information that could help in a diagnosis.
ETA: Ah! My .vimrc specified a column/row size. I've removed that line, and so far things are behaving well. Thank you!
vim is terminal based, and errors like this happen when the terminal you are using does not match the terminal vim thinks you are using. Most people use vim with terminal emulators. This kind of thing can happen when you resize the emulator window and vim does not find out about it, or more rarely, when the terminal-identifying-string specified in the environment does not match the terminal emulator you are running.
Without more details about the platform on which you are running vim, it is hard to be more specific-- but as a tip: don't resize the emulator window after it is created but before running vim.
Terminal emulators are supposed to communicate size changes back to the program running within them, but this is not 100% foolproof, especially when you are logged in to a remote machine within the emulator.
If you're doing this from a UNIX (Linux et al), try running :!resize to force your terminal to re-adjust its size parameters. At the very least it'll tell you what the system thinks your window is sized to, which may not match its actual size.
I had a similar problem when using vim with bash. When I switched from bash to zsh, it gave redraw errors where, while I typed, the cursor or screen would appear to go down one row for every 10 characters I typed. Scrolling with arrow keys also caused major display problems along the same lines, but worse.
I had this line in my previous .vimrc, I believe it was to set the color for vim
set t_256
I changed it to set term=xterm=256color and the problem went away.
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Background
I'm building an application where it detects what documents you're using from the file system. To do this it must access the AXDocument attribute of the active window. MacVim provides this. Running Vim in the Terminal wouldn't provide this.
I've just put out a survey to ask what editor coders who are interested in my app use. A significant number of the folk using Vim used it directly from the command line.
Why not use a GUI Vim?
Why do some people prefer to run Vim this way versus a GUI implementation like MacVim?
What advantages does this offer? As I understand it, you can send files to MacVim from the command line just as easily as command line Vim.
These reasons may be different for each specific developer but my guess would be:
vim is pretty much vim on any platform. GUI implementations can
vary.
Familiarity - being familiar with vim does not nessecarily mean
being familar with vim wrapped ina
GUI - espectially given #1.
"Elite Complex" ;-)
No definite avantages to the users over cli vim.
One might not have access to a gui (think ssh) or simply force of habit.
Although I don't use any feature exclusive to the GUI version (never touch the mouse while editing) I find GVIM more pleasing to the eye for fonts rendering and color management. So the only reason to use the cli version is not having access to a graphic environment (like when accessing a remote machine via ssh). Using GVIM also allows reuse of the terminal it was called from without having to use screen.
being able to run vim under screen provides
reliability: it will stay alive if X or the terminal app crashes. not sure how applicable this is to the Mac.
the option to multiplex sessions within terminal tabs. I actually end up rarely using terminal tabs because of this. It's possible (albeit a bit confusing) to set up heirarchical screen sessions and move branches of them around. screen is super awesome. This also provides an additional layer of text buffering in which you can search by regexp — this is useful if you spawn a shell command that is pages long and you're looking for a particular word in there.
the ability to connect to an existing session from another computer or reconnect after a network outage
and friends
in addition to making it possible to use screen, the console vim provides better shell integration. Although it's possible to run shell commands from within gvim (again, I'm not sure how this applies to the Mac, I'm a linux guy), there are limitations. I rarely use a gui vim so I'm not sure about the exact limits. For example, ANSI color codes are removed. I find this annoying because I tend to interact with SCM that way, for example running :!git diff --cached to check the changes in the index before committing. It makes for a somewhat quicker and more satisfying (mmm, diffy!) read if it's colourized.
I used to feel that gvim was a big improvement for viewing diffs, but I've changed the background colour of my terminal to a dark non-black shade, and set
:highlight DiffAdd ctermbg=Black
:highlight DiffChange ctermbg=Black
:highlight DiffDelete ctermbg=Black
:highlight DiffText cterm=Bold ctermbg=None
The result of this is that in diff mode, differing text shows up with a black background, and unchanged text is coloured with the terminal background colour. For side-by-side diffs, this works wonderfully, since you can tell immediately based on the other side whether a given line is a change or add; for non-side-by-side you will be able to see an unchanged part in a changed line.
This means that you can leave syntax colouring on and still be able to see diffs. Again, you do need to be able to set the background colour of the terminal to a unique, dark, non-black shade. This facility is available in the terminal emulators that I use (yakuake/konsole and roxterm) and many others.^[?Mac^M"mya)^O^Op
This also assumes that you're using a colourscheme meant for use with a dark background colour; I use a modified delek.
Although I haven't tried this, there is also the option to run console vim in 256-colour mode on terminals which support that mode — which I believe includes most or all modern ones. This can serve to make much of the subtlety of GUI colorschemes available to console vim.^["mp
I also like it that it lives in the place where it was started, and starts up quick. So if I'm navigating around in the shell, as per my wont, I can edit a file without interrupting that flow or having to farm that operation out to a different piece of conceptual real estate. Having less things to keep track of is a big plus. Being able to background it is helpful, too, for example if I need to grab the contents of an unexported shell variable via xclip. If I'd spawned a GUI window instead I might have some trouble remembering where that shell was, or might have already closed it.
My main reason for using a gui vim at all is that it makes somewhat more sense as something spawned from a gui app, eg a browser. In practice I never do this, and I suspect that it's fairly equivalent to just have a new terminal window pop up with a new console vim in it. Though there is likely some (window manager) window management functionality that is exclusive to gui implementations. This is pretty similar to the use case you're discussing.
gvim is actually just a basic terminal emulator with vim running in it, and some menus and toolbar buttons up the top.
So if you have a good, full-featured terminal emulator already, you may as well use that instead, since you'll be using the same type of terminal window that you are familiar with across all your terminal sessions.
Another benefit is that it makes it easy to switch to a shell inside vim and then switch out seamlessly.
On Windows I prefer gvim. On Linux it's vim inside gnome-terminal, which is nice and configurable thankyou.
To avoid (or at least minimize) the use of the mouse.
some gvim variations can't handle
some of my hotkeys
some spawn separate window when i try
to compile program
sometimes they simply can't use fonts
like fixed or terminus correctly
(think about "terminus bold" - some
gvim variations simply stretch
"terminus normal" instead of
rendering with the separate font)
cli generally works faster than gui,
especially if running in real
textmode console (not possible on a
mac though)
there are almost no benefits in using
GUI version, and i'd loose ability to
run in screen, ssh, to suspend
process with ctrl+z, and many more.
The main reason I use the command line is that I spend most of my day in a terminal already, and my use of vim reflects this. I do not open up vim for a long while just editing different files then opening others without closing it; I usually open a file or two do a few edits then do some command line tasks, maybe change a directory, and open up vim somewhere else. When using the a gui there is substantial lag when opening the editor. This wouldn't bother me if I opened it once and left it open but I tend to not work that way. So the command line works better for my workflow. Furthermore since there is no real benefit feature-wise of the GUI over the command line and vise-versa, I've always just stuck with the command line since it suited me better.
vim is way more performant with huge files (100-500MB .csv or .xml files in my case).
gvim beats vim hands-down when used to compare files (gvimdiff): setting the font (want more content on the screen?), dragging the window split line (want to see more of one file rather than the other) etc.
Other than that, I haven't seen other mayor differences and use gvim except when working with large files because I find it more handy in a graphical environment (gnome).
Speed of rendering
proper shell integration with
suspend (C-z),
alternate terminal,
uniform copy/paste
nicer quickfix integration (all external programs run inside your terminal, instead of popup windows... )
network agnostic: can run over ssh
using GNU screen, can detach/attach session over internet;
To the sometimes mentioned 'downside':
mouse support is up to par with :se mouse +=a; this enables selection, window border dragging with the mouse, even over GNU screen over ssh
Pair coding via vim + gnu screen is the selling point for me. I work in screen/vim all day, it allows people to remote into my screen session and we can both edit files fluidly. It's so hot right now.
As a big vim user myself, although I know about GUI vims, I don't use them just out of habit.
I've been using vi since 1990, switched to vim a few years ago but still call it through an alias (alias vi=vim).
For me its just habit. vim works well as it is. Perhaps the gui offers more and I should explore it, but vim works just the way I expect it to and want it to.