Display left margin visually starting from specified nonzero column

Question

I am beginning to use Vim for C++ development.

Many of my lines are within deep for loops or if conditions that with indenting and wrapping disallowed gives a structure that looks like this. x here is the cursor position.

 ___________________________________
 a window in a tab                  |
    {                               |
           {                        |
                //Really Long line  |                                
                     //Another Long.|
        x                      //Lo.|  
                                    |
____________________________________|

There are multiple lines that extend beyond the window's right margin (especially when there are vertical splits) and I have to scroll to the right to see the line in its entirety.

Is it possible to set up a command that can be toggled, dimensions increased or decreased that allows one to view the display of a window in a tab not from column 0 but from, say, column 10 to the right like so?

 ___________________________________
 a window in a tab                  |
                                    |
 {                                  |
    //Really Long line              |                                
         //Another Long line        |
 x                 //Long line      |  
                                    |
____________________________________|

I tried using repeated zl's (scroll right) to reach my desired scroll position. The trouble, however, is that whenever an empty line is encountered on pressing j or k (scrolling down or up), the display goes back to column 1 and the horizontal scrolled position is lost.

Answer 1

Is it possible to set up a command that can be toggled, dimensions increased or decreased that allows one to view the display of a window in a tab not from column 0 but from, say, column 10 to the right like so?

There is no built-in way to do it afaik.

I tried using repeated zl's (scroll right) to reach my desired scroll position. The trouble, however, is that whenever an empty line is encountered on pressing j or k (scrolling down or up), the display goes back to column 1 and the horizontal scrolled position is lost.

Here you can use :h 'virtualedit' as set ve=all. Having it your cursor would not jump to column 1 when you move cursor up/down.

BTW, there are

• zL move the view half a screenwidth to the right
• zH move the view half a screenwidth to the left
• zs scroll text horizontally making your cursor positioned on the very left of the window. (and ze is the opposite)

you can add to your zl.

There are also gm and gM to position your cursor on the half of screenwidth/linewidth. And probably more exists :)