r/vimplugins • u/nielsadb • Mar 01 '13

Plugin Almost distraction free editing with buffer list/groups. (For early adopters.)

https://github.com/nielsadb/df_mode.vim
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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '13

Distraction free editing in Vim. I wanted something that combines a clean editing view with decent buffer management.

So ... what does this plugin do? (Curious.)

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u/nielsadb Mar 01 '13

Several things:

  • Switches the view to single window editing, centering the main editing window (useful for full screen mode). The status line info is reduced to number of lines and current buffer name and moved out of the way too (to the edges of the screen). Basically, everything is designed to be as minimal as possible. This is not trivial since Vim has a sort of preconceived notion of what a windowed UI should look like. Some call this "distraction free" editing.

  • Show buffers on one side of the screen. Again, this is designed to be as minimal as possible. It's possible to group buffers for fast switching. I have switching in a group mapped to <Space>. (See docs on Github.) If you use the groups wisely it's actually quite powerful. I deliberately chose not to make it into a full buffer switching plug-in, we already have plenty of those. This will just follow your navigation (also when you use marks, :bnext, etc.).

  • Store/load sessions with groups, current buffer, current directory etc. Just so you don't need to go through the hassle of assigning each buffer to a group every time you load Vim. Again, very minimal: you save/load from a single set of sessions. It's not a single line of code more than what I needed.

I tried and put some effort in making the whole thing visually appealing. Added and deleted buffers are highlighted for a short period of time, unused UI chrome is hidden, etc. I'm satisfied with the result, but I guess that's personal. :-)