Dave Land wrote:
On Mar 21, 2007, at 11:44 PM, A.J.Mechelynck wrote:
Dave Land wrote:
Shawn & Vim friends,
On Mar 21, 2007, at 6:21 PM, shawn bright wrote:
cool, thanks, i knew there had to be something.
And it keeps getting better. Due to Vim's extensive programmability
and keystroke mapping and the endless creativity of its developer and
user communities), you can extend its behavior to your needs.
When you use the n and N keystrokes to step forward and backwards
through the list of matches for a pattern, the focus inevitably moves
down the screen from match to match until it reaches the last match
on the screen, then the screen scrolls up or down to bring the next
of-screen match into view... I tire of having to follow the cursor up
and down the screen following the cursor, so I came up with a
solution that works for me.
Now, I happen to use a Mac, so the keystrokes I've mapped make sense
to me, but might be different for someone else... This is a chunk out
of my .vimrc file:
" Command-[ and Command-] put the prev/next match at top of screen
map <D-[> kNz<CR> " put prev match at top of screen
map <D-]> jnz<CR> " put next match at top of screen
Thus, after having typed something like:
/foo
with my mappings, I can type command-] to go to the next match AND
scroll it to the top of my screen. That way, my tired old eyes can
sit in one place and watch the matches come to them.
This is especially handy when I'm editing a data file that has a lot
of lines that are formatted quite similarly: as the matched lines
replace each other as the "first" line on the screen, I clearly see
the parts that stay the same and the parts that change -- I make a
lot fewer mistakes that way.
I don't think j and k are necessary in your mappings; they may be
downright counter-productive (going back forever to the same match)
after a ? search.
Thanks for the correction, Tony, but at least I was _half_-right :-)
I generally don't use backwards searches (?), only forwards searches
(/). My mappings _do_ behave badly for backwards searches, and while I'm
sure something could be done to improve them, I think I'll stick with my
forward searches for now...
As you point out, though, even for forward searches (/), my mappings
were not quite right:
- The "k" command in my mapping for moving backward didn't create a
loop, as you suggested, but caused a match to the right of the current
character, but on the line above the current line, to be skipped:
k (move up one line)
N (find backwards -- sometimes skipping a match on that line)
z<CR> (scroll line to top of screen)
- The "j" command in my mapping for moving forward is still needed,
however, because the "z<CR>" sequence puts the cursor at the first
non-blank character of the line. Without the "j", you really _would_
keep finding the same match.
Thanks again,
Dave
Use zt instead of z<CR> and the cursor will stay in the same column.
Best regards,
Tony.
--
"When in doubt, tell the truth."
-- Mark Twain
