Output Vim display to Text

Question

I wonder if there is any command similar to :TOhtml, but for plain text only and representing the whole Vim display.

For example, given the display:

It would create the following text file:

  1 B                         1 a                     
~                           ~                         
~                           ~                         
~                           ~                         
~                           ~                         
~                           ~                         
~                           ~                         
~                           ~                         
 N  <me] [+]      100% 1:1  ~                         
  1 a                       ~                         
~                           ~                         
~                           ~                         
~                           ~                         
~                           ~                         
~                           ~                         
~                           ~                         
 N  <me] [+]      100% 1:1   N  <e] [+]      100% 1:1 

(this has been done via copy/paste from the terminal and manually formatting the text)

I did not found any option to do so, I think there is none.

How, if possible, can Vim achieve this?

Answer 1

Yes, there is a way to do this! You can use the screenchar() function. From :help screenchar()

screenchar(row, col)                        *screenchar()*
        The result is a Number, which is the character at position
        [row, col] on the screen.  This works for every possible
        screen position, also status lines, window separators and the
        command line.  The top left position is row one, column one
        The character excludes composing characters.  For double-byte
        encodings it may only be the first byte.
        This is mainly to be used for testing.
        Returns -1 when row or col is out of range.

To use this in a script, you can do the following:

fu! ScreenCapture()
    let array=[]
    for i in range(1,&lines)
        let row=''
        for j in range(1,&columns)
            let row.=nr2char(screenchar(i,j))
        endfor
        call add(array, row)
    endfor
    tabnew
    call setline(1,array)
endfu
com! ScreenCapture :call ScreenCapture()

This lovely piece of vimscript was written by Christian Brabandt, so if you find it useful go give him an upvote.

Here's an example of it in action. When I ran this function on my vim window:

I got this text:

  1                                    |  1                                     
~                                      |~                                       
~                                      |~                                       
~                                      |~                                       
~                                      |~                                       
~                                      |~                                       
~                                      |~                                       
~                                      |~                                       
~                                      |~                                       
~                                      |~                                       
~                                      |~                                       
[No Name]            0,0-1          All|~                                       
  1                                    |~                                       
~                                      |~                                       
~                                      |~                                       
~                                      |~                                       
~                                      |~                                       
~                                      |~                                       
~                                      |~                                       
~                                      |~                                       
~                                      |~                                       
~                                      |~                                       
~                                      |~                                       
[No Name]            0,0-1          All [No Name]             0,0-1          All
:call ScreenCapture()