Questions tagged [help-system]
Questions about Vim's built-in help system, which is accessible through the :help command
86
questions
3
votes
2answers
18 views
On string concatenation, what's the difference between . and .. (single dot and double dot)?
From the :execute help (:h :exe):
*:exe* *:execute*
:exe[cute] {expr1} .. Executes the string that results from the evaluation
of {expr1} as an Ex command.
...
0
votes
1answer
22 views
Make Line Numbers Appear in Documentation
I have set number in my init.vim (I am using neovim) and it works fine for any buffers I'm editing. However, I have to enter :set number into the command line to make line numbers appear in the ...
0
votes
0answers
35 views
Disabling Help menu in ubuntu vi
There have been many postings on this issue but none have worked for me. I'm running vim 8.2 on linux ubuntu 20.04, which maybe why some of the postings haven't worked. Like many, I'd like to ...
0
votes
1answer
29 views
What are the E tags in vim help?
I've been browsing vim's help and noticed there are some topics which have multiple E### tags and others with just a single E### tag. I'm curious as to what the significance of these E### tags are. My ...
0
votes
1answer
15 views
“auto-complete” normal mode command?
Once I press g (or anything that enters operator pending mode), is there a way to see what keys could follow (e.g. gf, ga etc)?
Alternatively, is there a way to search builtin + mapped keys by regex? ...
2
votes
1answer
29 views
Buffers that are neither active nor hidden
Both :ls and :buffers display a list with buffer information, giving indicators for each buffer. For example, # means the alternate buffer, and % means the current buffer. The meaning of each ...
1
vote
1answer
44 views
What exactly Ctrl + Shift + Right arrow does? How can I remap it or find help on this key combination?
I've noticed that pressing Ctrl+ Shift+ Right deletes text until some criteria are met but I can't figure out exactly what that is.
I'm also unsure how to find help when a character doesn't have a ...
0
votes
2answers
35 views
Automatically resize window based on filetype
I have a nifty autocommand in my vimrc that automatically maximizes any :help window:
augroup LargeHelpWindow
autocmd!
autocmd BufWinEnter * if &l:buftype ==# 'help' | wincmd _ | endif
...
0
votes
1answer
19 views
Prevent help page folds from being lost
When I open a help page, create a manual fold, set bufhidden=hide and buflisted, then navigate away from that page, the fold is not restored upon returning.
$ vim -u NONE
:help
" create a manual ...
0
votes
0answers
33 views
Why some shortcuts aren't listed on index.txt ? Is there a complete list?
The file index.txt is claiming to be a list of all commands,
but some keyboard shortcuts are listed on other files and not here.
And sometimes, the definition is a bit different in other files.
Are ...
2
votes
1answer
237 views
Is it safe to define more than 120 signs?
I am working on a plugin that could potentially define more than 120 different signs. The vim / neovim documentation specifies that you can define about 120 signs (not sure why this number and why so ...
0
votes
0answers
29 views
How to find next match by “:help”?
For example, you are using "mattn/emmet.vim", and command :help todo, it shows emmet-todo. Not vim side's todo.
I'd like to find vim side's todo, but can't go to next match... how can I go ...
0
votes
0answers
59 views
CTRL-] keys not working with very specific tags
So, I'm trying to use vim's help tags in my notes files, so that i can easily reach them (without using ex command or making a new keymapping).
For that, i used:
set tags=$VIMRUNTIME/doc/tags
to set ...
1
vote
1answer
26 views
Single page version of docs
I would like to read the Vim user guide and reference docs and man pages on my Kindle Paperwhite. Does anyone know of a single page web readable version of the docs? Or even a PDF?
Https://vim.help is ...
2
votes
1answer
43 views
How to add translated help to vim?
I have vim 8.1 installed.
I want to use the help files translated into french.
The debian package vimhelp-fr is not maintained any more, the compressed tar is unavailable, so I installed the version 6....
1
vote
1answer
31 views
Where is vim man-page online and within vim help? (e.g., in vimhelp.org, and from :help)
Q1: Where can I find the vim man page online? (an up-to-date version)
Q2: Where can I find the vim man page within the vim help system? (i.e., :help)
http://vimhelp.org looks like the canonical up-to-...
3
votes
1answer
119 views
How to list all help subjects and help files?
Q1: How can I list all vim help subjects (topics)?
i.e., the {subject} argument for :h[elp] {subject}
Q2: How can I list all vim help files?
My particular use case is that I want to see help for my ...
2
votes
1answer
32 views
Where is the help function defined or located?
I'm trying to find where the help function/command is defined.
So far I tried:
:verbose function help
but since the h isn't in uppercase, it doesn't work (not sure if it's even a function at this ...
0
votes
1answer
41 views
How to cycle through all “tags” matching `:h {subject}`?
Suppose :h {subject} results in multiple matches for the tag {subject}.
The :h entry says that the "best" match will be used, which is not very useful, If I don't know exactly what to search ...
1
vote
1answer
33 views
How to search for documentation on an option which is also a vim command argument? [duplicate]
When a Vim option is also a Vim command argument, :help opens the command argument help page. How can I direct :help to get the option page?
For example, trying :help verbose opens the -V verbose ...
4
votes
0answers
35 views
Convert VIM doc (vim help) to Markdown or vice versa [duplicate]
Suppose you are writing a vim plugin hosted on Github (which seems to be a standard for now). You don't want to maintain two help files: README.md (Markdown) and doc/your_plugin.txt (vim help) with ...
0
votes
1answer
51 views
Help navigating help files
In the case below, how would I find what the definition of [cmd] or [range] or {pattern} is ?
I have tried CTRL-] with my cursor on these, but this does not do anything.
2
votes
1answer
488 views
`:help` returns an “E432: Tags file not sorted” error
I am attempting to use to the :help command in Neovim however the following error is returned:
E432: Tags file not sorted: /Users/seeker/.config/nvim/plugged/nerdtree/doc/tags
E432: Tags file not ...
1
vote
2answers
132 views
:help - is there something like apropos?
A very helpful comment led me to investigate :help mode-switching where after typing :help mode I used autocomplete to explore which additional help topics contained mode.
This was a very large ...
1
vote
1answer
87 views
How to show the name of a help buffer in the tabline of the airline?
I use :h command to open a help buffer. When I switch to other buffers, I can't go back to the opened help buffer. How can I show the name of a help buffer in the tabline of the airline?
2
votes
2answers
243 views
Can the temp gzip decompression location for the integrated help documents be changed from /tmp?
Is it possible to configure vi to use a different location, say my home directory, for the uncompressed help files (or maybe to open them in RO if that's the problem)?
When attempting to open a help ...
11
votes
2answers
2k views
2
votes
1answer
70 views
help {subject} path precedence
:h {subject} reads
If there is no full match for the pattern, or there
are several matches, the "best" match will be used.
A sophisticated algorithm is used to decide which
match is better than ...
2
votes
2answers
321 views
Why are helptags not shipped with plugins?
Part of the job performed by virtually all plugin managers in Vim is to create helptags, which will index the help files shipped with the plugins and will allow searching for commands and mappings ...
1
vote
0answers
44 views
Ctrl-] matching single word in custom tags
When using vim's help I can jump to multi-word tags, but when creating my own tags Ctrl-] tries to match individual words. Consider the following example:
file.txt
|a-tag|
*a-tag*
When ...
0
votes
0answers
85 views
How do I create the help system for Vim?
I built Vim from source and unfortunately when doing this the help system is not created (in other words you get an error if you execute :h). What is the procedure for creating the help system?
This ...
0
votes
0answers
64 views
BufRead autocmd error for “*.*” and E45
I have vim version 7.4.1689. It was running quite smoothly. But recently I noticed a problem that I didn't have before. Whenever I run :help <something> in command mode the following error shows ...
0
votes
0answers
48 views
install / repair help system
I built vim from source on Arch Linux and the help system is not present. I do not see any help-related options when I do vim --version.
I assume it is either broken somehow or not installed. How can ...
0
votes
2answers
31 views
How to go to different matching entry in vim's help [duplicate]
Example: I tried finding out about foldclose because it sounded strange to me that it isn't a binary setting but still only knows the value "all". I typed :h foldclose and landed on a description of ...
1
vote
1answer
143 views
Best practices and tools for documenting vimscript functions?
I have quickly skimmed through :h user-functions and a couple random vim plugins and all I could find were patterns like
" one-line short function description
function foo()
<function body here&...
0
votes
2answers
161 views
Help for filetype specifics
I often find myself jotting notes in Vim using an empty buffer which in this case has 'no ft' (status line).
I know I could set the filetype with :setfiletype text but I honestly wonder what that ...
12
votes
1answer
6k views
Generating help tags for packages that are loaded by Vim 8's package management
I have a few packages installed in my ~/.vim/pack/default/start directory, for example Tabular and Unicode. After starting up vim I can use these packages but cannot access their help information. ...
0
votes
0answers
106 views
How to create man-pages and link them like in vim help system?
I would like to create documentation just like vim-help system . Multiple .txt files with links and cross references and where I can jump foreward CTRL+] and back using CTRL+T. How is it done?
4
votes
2answers
113 views
Where are the French help files?
Background: I'm an english-speaking, francophone student. In an effort to improve my vocabulary, my MacBook has been running in French since January, when I arrived in France. Incidentally, this means ...
0
votes
2answers
104 views
How do you get help with operators?
How can I get help on operators as opposed to normal mode commands? For example, if I type the following:
:h .
Then I will get the help on the normal mode dot command, not on the string ...
2
votes
1answer
186 views
Helptags has unexpected behavior if tag has hyphen
I'm creating a plugin and I'm writing its documentation according to :helptags. However I cannot link my tags if they have an hyphen in them. The strange thing is that help-writing itself has a hyphen ...
1
vote
2answers
670 views
vimscript: get result of cmdline-completion Ctrl-a
Need a function that,
returns a string, which is result of cmdline-completion Ctrl-a, i.e.,
a list of words seperated by space.
given an input string of partial ex-command.
For example,
given :h ...
-5
votes
1answer
119 views
What is the command for indenting code in vim with syntastic plugin? [closed]
I need to know how to reindent the code with syntastic.
I have tried using:
:call Retab() ## it is showing it's invalid
:call GetPythonIndent(v:lnum)
I need a plugin support.Plz don't provide ...
2
votes
2answers
633 views
Piping to vim vs vim -
When I pipe text to vim I discovered that by using:
cat somefile | vim -
it works properly, whereas:
cat somefile | vim
makes a mess of the code. For example, type:
cat test.pl | vim
where test....
6
votes
1answer
726 views
Plugin help files not found
I am on windows 10 and installed pathogen into home/vimfiles/autoload, and as far as I know all went well. Following the directions here, I installed nerdcommenter. I restarted gvim, tried :help ...
2
votes
2answers
709 views
Setting custom statusline for help window
I've been trying to set a custom statusline for help files. I tried:
set statusline=%!StatusLine()
function! StatusLine()
if &ft == 'help'
let b:status = "%#error#[HELP]%*"
else
...
0
votes
2answers
297 views
Is there a help plugin which can behave like guake for vim?
I am new to VIM and have been looking for a feature/plugin like guake for terminals wherein I could open the help functionality in a dropdown box without typing :q to close the vim help menu.
If ...
1
vote
1answer
83 views
Linking to documentation in a comment
I'd like to provide anyone reading my plugin in Vim a direct link to the help article on command-completion
At the moment, I'm simply saying " :help command-completion but i'd love to do something ...
0
votes
0answers
22 views
Invoke vi help from bash without starting Vim [duplicate]
How do I invoke the vi help while I am in bash without starting a vi session?
6
votes
1answer
330 views
What does `*foo* *[foo]*` mean in the vim help system?
When searching the help for "count", :h count I'm shown the help page:
*count* *[count]*
[count] An optional number that may precede the command to multiply
or ...
