146
votes
Accepted
How do I navigate to topics in Vim's documentation?
Vim comes with an exhaustive and fully indexed documentation that contains the answers to most of the questions you may have on using Vim.
But the documentation is huge and may look to the neophyte ...
- 33.1k
60
votes
Accepted
How to "full screen" browse Vim help?
Just expand the help window to be the only visible window: Ctrlw-o
When you're done you can switch back to your other buffers.
- 2,251
34
votes
Accepted
What is the correct capitalization of 'vim'?
This actually took quite some searching, but the correct way is 'Vim'. From
:help pronounce:
Vim is pronounced as one word, like Jim, not vi-ai-em. It's written with a capital, since it's a name, ...
- 56.9k
33
votes
Accepted
Learning Vim after vimtutor
Sharpen the saw
The best general advice is a simple one, "Sharpen the saw" from Bram's Seven habits essay. I also suggest Vimcasts blog post: On sharpening the saw.
Basically "sharpening the saw" ...
- 14.9k
32
votes
How to "full screen" browse Vim help?
Alternatively, you could open the help window in a new tab: :tab help foo, and then use :q to close it.
- 13.8k
25
votes
Generating help tags for packages that are loaded by Vim 8's package management
Using :helptags ALL should re-generate all helptags for all doc directories in runtimepath; which should include the ~/.vim/pack/default/start/* directories.
You will probably get an error similar to:...
- 56.9k
24
votes
How to "full screen" browse Vim help?
The other answers have already answered your question, but for the sake of completeness:
If you just want to temporarily get a larger window for your help-viewing, you can use either or both of the ...
- 28.2k
22
votes
How can I make Vim open help in a vertical split?
You can use :vert h [your topic] to open help vertically.
You can use the following command:
cnoreabbrev H vert h
To make vim replace H by vert h automatically in command line.
Also you can use ...
- 46.5k
20
votes
How can a complete beginner learn Vim using just Vim itself?
You can learn Vim by reading :help from top to bottom. When you enter :help, it looks like this:
*help.txt* For Vim version 7.3. Last change: 2010 Jul 20
VIM - main ...
- 2,648
16
votes
Accepted
Shadowed terms in help
Setting names are always surrounded by quotes, so use:
:help 'display'
to get the page you want.
You get some useful completions when pressing Ctrl+D, ie:
:help display<^D>
Will give you:
-...
- 56.9k
13
votes
How to "full screen" browse Vim help?
You can move the help screen to its own tab with
ctrl+w T (note the T is upper case).
Then you can switch between the tabs with gt.
- 740
13
votes
Accepted
What does `idem` mean in the VIM docs?
It's a latin term meaning "the same". In the quoted context, it just means the listed command does the same thing as the previously listed command, i.e. remove item 3:
:let i = remove(list, 3) " ...
- 28.2k
11
votes
Shadowed terms in help
Help for Ex commands is always listed with the colon included:
:help :display
Help for settings is always listed with surrounding quotes, as Carpetsmoker already described:
:help 'display'
Specific ...
- 28.2k
10
votes
Accepted
Opening built-in cheat sheet
That's not a cheat sheet; it's a history of the commands you've executed. It allows you to find, edit and repeat commands you've previously executed. There are a couple of ways you can enter it. One ...
- 5,934
10
votes
Accepted
Plugin help files not found
you have to create the help-tags.
Run :helptags for the dir where you installed the docs.
On unix this would most likely be :helptags ~/.vim/doc.
Or simply recreate them all with :helptags ALL
- 2,599
9
votes
How can a complete beginner learn Vim using just Vim itself?
Like others have mentioned vimtutor is a good place to start, there are several other resources available to you for improving on your knowledge & understanding of the vim philosophy, which ...
- 5,235
9
votes
How do I generate Vim documentation from Markdown notes or inline comments, or are there better ways to add documentation?
As far as I know there is currently no good solution for either problem, but a lot of people would be interested in solving them.
Markdown is a superset of HTML, so I'd say a frontal approach to ...
- 3,618
9
votes
How can I make Vim open help in a vertical split?
This is inspired from junegunn 's vimrc:
augroup vimrc_help
autocmd!
autocmd BufEnter *.txt if &buftype == 'help' | wincmd L | endif
augroup END
- 9,340
8
votes
Accepted
Is there any way to add to the help system without developing a plugin
Adding a help file is actually fairly easy: as documented in :help add-local-help, you plop it in ~/.vim/doc and then run :helptags ~/.vim/doc. That's (part of) what your plugin manager is doing for ...
- 1,835
8
votes
Accepted
How to search the help docs from a command prompt
Use the -c argument to execute a command after Vim starts up:
vim -c ':help TOPIC' -c :only
You may want to define a shell function:
vimhelp () {
vim -c ":help $1" -c :only
}
8
votes
How can I switch to filetype=txt when entering insert mode for Vim help files?
Asked: Setting the filetype
The autocommands in the question are a good start, and with 2 extra pieces of
knowledge we can finish it:
You can define autocommands everywhere. autocmd and augroup are "...
- 56.9k
8
votes
Accepted
What does "tag" mean in the context of Vim's help window?
The tag is useful for two things:
When using the :help command, the tag is the exact phrase which will let you distinguish between similar terms.
{...
- 23.9k
8
votes
Accepted
Jump to next identifier in Vim help files
In the help files the identifiers are actually marked as |identifier| (but you don't see the | because of the syntax file, use set ft=txt in an help buffer to check what I'm talking about).
You could ...
- 46.5k
8
votes
Prevent vim closing the editor when the last window/splits are help pages
using the command :clo[se] instead of :q seems to have solved the problem for me.
I.e. if I issue :clo with the above window layout, it causes vim to throw
E444: Cannot close last window.
In ...
- 2,940
8
votes
Accepted
How to Interpret Syntax in VIM Help Pages
The basic help syntax being used is (of course) being explained in the help system itself.
You can find it (in the not so easy discoverable) help tag :h notation. Copying it here for reference:
4. ...
- 23.4k
7
votes
How to "full screen" browse Vim help?
You can make the help window full width and height by eliminating all other split windows, using Control-wo while inside the help window. This command makes the current window the only window, ...
- 2,648
7
votes
How do I navigate to topics in Vim's documentation?
-0.1 make notes about vim in a file. Use it as reference and container.
fast way to find vim help of key | :cmd | 'option' | etc
:h gi or :h g; for gi or g; in normal mode
:h ^i for Ctrl-i in normal ...
- 901
7
votes
Change vimtutor language
1'st method
Run vimtutor (from command line) with 2 letter language code like:
vimtutor en (for English)
vimtutor pt (for Portuguese)
etc...
2'nd method
Open tutor with different language with:
...
- 1,478
7
votes
How can I make Vim open help in a vertical split?
You can use a custom command that does the vertical-or-not selection for you. This can be based on the current window width and height :
function! s:ShowHelp(tag) abort
if winheight('%') < ...
- 15.2k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible