I'm using Vim to write text that isn't code, just free form writing. To do this I like to have formatoptions include the w flag and sometimes the a flag.
The w flag is supposed to make it so an end-of-paragraph occurs when a line ends in a non-blank character, rather than at first blank line (which is Vim default). Here is snippet from the help docs:
w Trailing white space indicates a paragraph continues in the next line.
A line that ends in a non-white character ends a paragraph.
The a flag makes reformatting automatic, as you type. For example, in document with text below and w and a flags the lines reformat as I type only up to the 'last line in paragraph' and not below.
This it the first line of the paragraph. <cr>
The text in it reformats properly as I type <cr>
up to the last line of the paragraph, which is <cr>
right after this line, that is, just below here: <cr>
This is the last line of paragraph.<cr>
This is the first line of second paragraph. <cr>
Even though there is no blank line between <cr>
it and first paragraph, any reformatting of <cr>
the first paragraph ends at the last line <cr>
of first paragraph.<cr>
<cr>
This the the first line after second paragraph<cr>
Now to my question:
With a and w flags the reformatting works properly as I type in the first paragraph, i.e, second paragraph remains untouched. But sometimes I want to select the current paragraph using vap. It seems to me that with the w flag set this should select only the first paragraph. But in fact issuing vap in first paragraph selects the second paragraph also, all the way down to the blank line with <cr>, seemingly ignoring the w formatoptions flag.
Is this expected behavior? Am I missing something? Why does vap not select only the paragraph I'm in, which ends at first line with no trailing whitespace?
If you read the help at :h paragraph this does not mention the 'fo' setting. So it
looks like the fo setting does not really change, what defines a paragraph. This might be a bug or unclear documentation, so you might want to discuss this on the vim-dev mailinglist.
From :help text-objects or :h paragraph you can see that a paragraph for vim begins after each empty line, and also at each of a set of paragraph macros, specified by the pairs of characters in the 'paragraphs' option. Blank lines containing only whitespace are also paragraph boundaries.
The w flag in formatoptions only makes a difference when autoformatting a paragraph as you type: it will split lines and leave whitespace at the end of lines which do not end a paragraph. I suppose the help text is a bit confusing.
Related
I like the Markdown style underlining, but I want it to line up with the above line.
So for example if I have this:
heading one
_
^ cursor here
I could (in normal mode) just type (something)i=<ESC><ESC>, and the result would be:
heading one
===========
^ cursor here
Does anyone know what I can use for (something)?
It doesn't really matter to me where my cursor is/ends up, so for example I could be on the last position of the heading one line and do some operation to achieve the same result. I'm picky, but not that picky.
If you use visual selections you can then use r to replace every character in said visual selection.
So if you start with your cursor on the "heading one" line type.
yypVr=
Would copy the line and then replace every character with an equal sign.
kyypv$r=j
go up one line
yank it
paste it below
visually select the line
replace every character with =
Turn it into a mapping if you ned it often:
nnoremap <key> kyypv$r=j
I'd suggest you do this on the line to underline itself and not on the line below, though:
nnoremap <key> yypv$r=
Launch vim.
In the empty buffer, insert two lines where the first line consists of 3 spaces and the second line consists of hello world.
Here is an example file where the spaces are represented with dots.
...
hello world
Now press gg. The cursor moves to the third space of the first line.
Quoting :help gg:
<C-Home> or *gg* *<C-Home>*
gg Goto line [count], default first line, on the first
non-blank character |linewise|. If 'startofline' not
set, keep the same column.
The documentation says that the cursor should move to the first non-blank character of the first line. I have two questions.
Does :help document the definition of a non-blank character? If so, could you please point me to it?
Is the behaviour that we observe in the experiment mentioned above consistent with the documentation provided in :help gg?
I don't think there is a general definition of non-blank in the vim docs, but I also do not believe this is a "side effect" of gg.
Note that gg is consistent here with ^:
^ To the first non-blank character of the line.
|exclusive| motion.
and [:blank:] of vim's pattern matching behavior (:h blank) defines blank characters as space and tab:
*[:blank:]* [:blank:] space and tab characters
As far as whether or not this is consistent with gg, consider what it says it will do as two steps instead of one:
Go to the first line (default since no count was specified) -- it does this.
Go to the first non-blank character of said line.
Probably the easiest way to implement 2 as an algorithm is to position the cursor after all the blank characters at the beginning of the line. In your case, they are all blank characters (and it cannot move to the next line), so the cursor is positioned at the end of the line (after all the blank characters).
I use autoformat (textwidth = 72) to write my emails in vim.
The problem is that every time I write a list or short phrases, vim joins it to the line above.
p.e.
These are my options:
- option nr. 1
When I write "-", the "-" is immediately joined with the phrase above:
These are my options: -
Same when I use other kind of lists p.e. numbered lists or other symbols before the list.
Same thing when I write phrases shorter then 72 characters p.e.
This is my text.
This is my text on the 2nd line.
Autoformat changes it to:
This is my text. This is my text on the 2nd line.
How can I change this behavior?
I only want to format long lines when there are no Carriage Return <CR> in the first 72 characters.
If there is a <CR> it has to break there.
:help autoformat gives some useful hints:
You need to properly define paragraphs. The simplest is paragraphs that are
separated by a blank line. When there is no separating blank line, consider
using the 'w' flag and adding a space at the end of each line in the
paragraphs except the last one.
So, either :setlocal fo+=w, or turn off autoformat (maybe only temporarily, with a quick toggle mapping).
'. can jump to the line of last change. But I need to jump to the exactly point.
Use `.. That is, backtick followed by a dot.
As a change has a beginning and an end, `[ and `] are also very helpful:
'[ `[ To the first character of the previously changed
or yanked text.
'] `] To the last character of the previously changed or
yanked text.
After executing an operator the Cursor is put at the beginning of the text
that was operated upon. After a put command ("p" or "P") the cursor is
sometimes placed at the first inserted line and sometimes on the last inserted
character. The four commands above put the cursor at either end. Example:
After yanking 10 lines you want to go to the last one of them: "10Y']". After
inserting several lines with the "p" command you want to jump to the lowest
inserted line: "p']". This also works for text that has been inserted.
answers are kinda old, but for current reference:
:changes show a list of changes
g; jump to last edit
g, jump forward in last edit's
found at vimtricks
I suggest a mapping to jump to the last changing point, as we have:
gv ................... repeats last selection
gi ................... enters insert at the last inserting point
" gl to jump to the last change "exactly"
nnoremap gl `.
Reference: https://twitter.com/dotvimrc/status/191163723065462786
I have some text files previously formatted in vim using "gggqG". Now I need to convert them to one line per paragraph format. I saw a way(using :g command) to do that before, but I have forgot it. Anyone knows?
There are two approaches I know of:
Set textwidth to something big and reformat:
:set tw=1000000
gggqG
Use substitute (this is more appropriate if you want to do it in a mapping):
:%s/.\zs\n\ze./ /
Explanation of the latter:
:%s " Search and replace across the whole file
/ " Delimiter
.\zs\n\ze. " Look for a character either side of a new-line (so ignore blank lines).
" The \zs and \ze make the replacement only replace the new-line character.
/ / " Delimiters and replace the new-line with a space.
If your text paragraphs are separated by a blank line, this seems to work:
:g!/^\s*$/normal vipJ
:g global (multi-repeat)
!/^\s*$/ match all lines except blank lines and those containing only whitespace.
normal enters 'normal' mode
vip visually select inner paragraph
J join lines
Maybe you should set textwidth to very large value (like 99999999) (0 does not work for some reason) and use gggqG?
// I cannot tell you a way to reformat your paragraph with :g without knowing exactly what the paragraph is. Maybe somebody else can.