The purpose of j, k, gj, and gk is to _position the cursor_ for the next editing command.
They might also move the buffer up or down relative to the viewport, but that is only a _side effect_ of having the cursor at the top or bottom of the window. :help 'smoothscroll' works perfectly, but _for actual "scrolling" commands_, which j, k, gj, and gk are not. Use Ctrl-E, Ctrl-Y, etc. to _scroll_. See :help scrolling. On Saturday, October 11, 2025 at 11:25:03 AM UTC+2 Yee Cheng Chin wrote: > I don't think the issue is asymmetric as you claimed? gj/gk exhibits > the same jumping behavior both up and down (which is also shown in > your video). When you go to a new line, Vim tries to fit the entire > wrapped line with the cursor in the whole screen which is why it feels > jumpy. I don't think there is a builtin way to fix this. You could > write a script to re-scroll the text using Ctrl-E/Ctrl-Y when you do > gj/gk to get around this issue though. You could of course file an > issue to Vim to see if there will be an appetite to add this as an > option. > > On Fri, Oct 10, 2025 at 2:38 PM Marc Adler <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > I use Vim to write text, ie prose with paragraphs. > > > > > > Vim interprets a paragraph as a single line, but it's good at displaying > line breaks anyway. > > > > > > The problem is that it skips up and down by paragraph when you scroll up > and down with gj and gk, making the text jerky and difficult to read. > > > > > > Smoothscroll fixes this, but only when you're scrolling down. > > > > > > Is there a way to make it work when scrolling up? > > > > > > Here's an example of what I'm talking about. The first is Vim (Neovim) > and the second is VSCode. The VSCode behavior is what you see in every > other text editor. > > > > > > Vim: > > > > https://imgur.com/a/u83V2TA > > > > > > VSCode: > > > > https://imgur.com/a/8dhcXo1 > > > > > > Is there a way to fix this? Like I said, this behavior is unique to Vim. > > > > -- > > -- > > You received this message from the "vim_use" maillist. > > Do not top-post! Type your reply below the text you are replying to. > > For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php > > > > --- > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "vim_use" group. > > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send > an email to [email protected]. > > To view this discussion visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/vim_use/6ac646eb-a298-4540-be5f-5e5b884a1803n%40googlegroups.com > . > -- -- You received this message from the "vim_use" maillist. Do not top-post! Type your reply below the text you are replying to. For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "vim_use" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/vim_use/de12bf6e-8999-47a5-bdfa-3be9e7f6c724n%40googlegroups.com.
