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Imagine a 30-character line shown in a 20-character wide window. How can I soft wrap it at the 25th column?

With :set nowrap

|01234567890123456789|0123456789
|       window       |

After scrolling till 25th character.

01234|56789012345678901234|56789
     |       window       |

Desired behaviour:

01234|56789012345678901234|
     |56789               |
     |       window       |

I tried :set columns with a large number but it messed up other elements like statusline.

A similar question instead concerns with setting column number smaller than the window width.

4
  • Why not turn on wrap, which does this? You can scroll left and right with zl and zh i think
    – D. Ben Knoble
    Feb 27, 2021 at 14:54
  • @D.BenKnoble :set wrap won't have the specified behavior (3rd example).
    – tejasvi88
    Feb 27, 2021 at 15:23
  • There is no built-in way to do what you want, and I don't think that implementing that with a plugin would be possible (I could be wrong tho)
    – statox
    Mar 1, 2021 at 15:42
  • Vim doesn't really have any soft wrapping capabilities. See: github.com/vim/vim/issues/1847 Mar 2, 2021 at 5:06

1 Answer 1

1

I thought I found a good example of what can't be done with Vim. (Un)fortunately I was wrong.

The specified behavior can be accomplished by:

  1. Concealing first n characters of every line. E.g. :syn match Concealed '^.\{25\}' conceal
    1. n is determined by the current 1 + virtcol(".") - wincol().
    2. This needs to be updated on every WinScrolled (Neovim only) event.
  2. Setting concealcursor=nvic.
  3. :set wrap
2
  • This is an abomination. I love it!
    – Rich
    Mar 3, 2021 at 13:53
  • The answer could be improved by a). including the code! b). adding a plain-English explanation of how it works.
    – Rich
    Mar 3, 2021 at 13:53

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