EzDevInfo.com

How to set background color for Vim's active window only?

A small but visually pleasing feature, and slightly adding to usability, I'd like to have Vim use different background color for the active window.

Here's a sketch of what I am after:

Normally that vim would have all the background in black, but if only the active window had its own color to highlight user's attention. Highlighting just the statusbar only isn't enough!

bashrc: how to know X window is available or not?

There is a part in my ~/.bashrc, which sets $EDITOR to be gvim. It works fine when I am in X window. However, if I ssh to my workstation (from another workstation) gvim starts to complain "cannot open display".

Therefore I wish to put an if statement in bashrc, that if X window is available then use gvim, otherwise let it be vim.

How could I achieve that?

How can I discard my undo history in vim?

Undo is nice to have in Vim. But sometimes, at a known good point, I want to erase my undo history - to be able to use u to undo individual changes, but only back to a certain point. (For instance, this might be when I last committed.)

One way to accomplish this would be to close and reopen the file - the undo history starts clean at that point. But that's a hassle.

In the past, I accomplished this with :edit!. But in Vim 7.3, that doesn't discard the undo history.

Is there another way to do this, apart from closing the file?

How do I copy command output in vim?

For example, if I type ':pwd' to get the current working directory, I can select the text in gvim but I can't figure out how to copy it to the clipboard. If I try the same in console vim, I can't even select it with the mouse. I would like this to work with all vim commands, such as set guifont to copy the guifont=Consolas:h10:cANSI output.

Vim: How to synchronize NERDTree with current opened tab file path?

When I open a new tab with different path from the previous file in VIM, NERDTree will still remains the same directory hierarchy of the previous file.

Is there a sync shortcut to change the current root directory to the new opened file's directory?

How do you change the default colorscheme in gvim?

In GVIM for Windows I know you are supposed to be able to add something to the $VIM/_vimrc file in order to customize the start up and I have managed how to figure out a few neat tricks with that but I can't figure out how to change the default color settings. Right now every time I start vim, I have to type

:color pablo

before I can do any work (black on white bothers me when coding in anything but Java). I feel like this is 12 extra keystrokes I shouldn't have to be making every time I start vim. Is there a way I can have vim start using this setting by default?

How to install gvim on Ubuntu 10.10?

I checked under Software Center, but I could not find it. How can I install gvim?

How do I open a blank new file in a split in Vim?

Must be something super obvious, but I can't figure out, and Google is not helping out either.

How do I find the encoding of the current buffer in vim?

Say I am editing some file with vim (or gvim). I have no idea about the file's encoding and I want to know whether it is in UTF-8 or ISO-8859-1 or whatever? Can I somehow tell vim to show me what encoding is used?

How do I customize the gvim toolbar?

I'd like to remove some of the default icons and maybe add one or two icons of my own. For example, it would be nice if there were icons for the NerdTree and the Taglist.

Setting background color in gvim

I use a terminal with white text on black background (I just like it better), so I wrote the following line in my .vimrc file:

set background=dark

However, gvim has black on white text. How do I do either of the following:

• Set the background of gvim to black
• Check in .vimrc if I'm using gvim

I tried this: I started up gvim, and typed echo &term. The answer was "builtin_gui". So I wrote the following into .vimrc:

if &term == "builtin_gui"
    set background=light
else
    set background=dark
endif

Somehow, it didn't work.

Vim - dynamic list of open buffers in a window

I've investigated a few ways to maintain a list of open buffers in Vim, and some of them are very good, but none of them seem to behave the way I'd like. It's very possible that nothing like what I want exists, and it can't hurt to ask.

I've been using NERDTree in GVim, and I like the idea of putting the information in a slender left-hand window. I've put together a handy diagram for how I'd like my environment to look:

|--------|---------------------------------------|
|        |                                       | 
|        |                                       | 
|NERDTree|           Windows                     | 
|        |                                       | 
|        |                                       | 
|        |                                       | 
|--------|                                       |
|        |                                       | 
|        |                                       | 
|  List  |                                       | 
|   of   |                                       | 
|  Open  |                                       | 
| Buffers|                                       | 
|        |                                       | 
|        |                                       | 
|--------|---------------------------------------|

So my question is: Is there a vim-native or plugin-enabled way to maintain a list of currently open buffers and select/edit/close from that list, inside a window similar to NERDTree?

I understand that this approach may be incongruous with the Vim way of doing things, and if you feel like I'm missing something about how to manage multiple files in a Vim session, please leave a comment with suggestions!

gVim: How to open multiple files in its own tab at once?

in most GUI text editor I can use ctrl click to open multiple files at once. I can't do that in gvim.
What the gvim way to do it?
Tnx.

-edit- ...using gui way instead of command line.

What is a vim "runtime directory"?

I'm trying to get started with things like FuzzyFinder, but I am stuck at the point where it says:

INSTALLATION

Put all files into your runtime directory. If you have the zip file, extract it to your runtime directory.

You should place the files as follows:

your_runtime_directory/plugin/fuf.vim

...

What is a "runtime directory"? What goes in there? Where is mine?

Better GUI for vim?

I enjoy using vim, its endless features and the way it does things (for the most part). I've been using it on and off (not as my main editor) for at least 7 years now, so while I'm far from being an expert, I generally know my way around it.

Now, while I love it in the command-line, I'd really like it to be my main editor in Windows and Linux GUIs. But... gvim... is horrible. It breaks so many usability "rules" on Windows that it's not even worth fighting with it. Not even Cream, with its changes and fancy .vimrc, saves the day.

So, my question is: is there a modern vim GUI for Windows and Linux that makes it look and behave as most GUI editors? Having Sublime Text, Kate, TextMate or Editra's GUI with vim's features would be incredible. I realize all four (as well as many other editors) have plugins that sort of makes them behave like vim, but it's nowhere close (at least for Editra and Sublime Text, not sure for the others) the real vim.

Vim being open source, I'm really not sure why there hasn't been a complete GUI overhaul yet. Do people not use gvim?