Chapter 5: Splitting Windows and Tabs

First separate three concepts that are easy to confuse:

• a buffer is text loaded into memory for editing;
• a window is a viewport displaying a buffer;
• a tab page is a layout containing one or more windows.

One buffer can appear in two windows, and one tab page can hold several windows. Vim tabs are therefore not a “one tab, one file” model.

Splitting Windows and Tabs

You will often encounter situations where you need to edit the current document with reference to another document (scenario: translation), or copy code from another document to the current document (scenario: copying html element class names to a css document). copy code from another document to the current document (scenario: copying html element class names to a css document), this is when you need to split the screen the most.

Splitting

• :split abbreviation :sp or Ctrl-w s split up and down.
• :vsplit Abbreviation :vs or Ctrl-w v Split left and right.
• :diffsplit Abbreviation :diffs Diff mode opens a split screen and can be followed by {filename}.

Window jumping

• Ctrl-w w Activate next window.
• Ctrl-w j Activates the next window.
• Ctrl-w k Activate the upper window.
• Ctrl-w h Activate left window
• Ctrl-w l activates the right window

Move split screen

• Ctrl-w L Moves to rightmost window
• Ctrl-w H Moves to the leftmost side.
• Ctrl-w K Move to the top
• Ctrl-w J Move to the bottom

_Note: Case sensitive. Alternatively, you can move the bottom screen to the right side for a top/bottom to left/right split screen conversion. _

Screen zoom

• Ctrl-w = Average window size
• Ctrl-w + Increase height
• Ctrl-w - Reduce height
• Ctrl-w _ Maximum height
• Ctrl-w > Increase width
• Ctrl-w < Reduce width
• Ctrl-w | Maximum width

Practice! Practice! Practice!

Run :split and scroll each window independently. They are two views of the same buffer: edit in one and the other updates too. Undo the edit with u, then close the current window with Ctrl-w c.

Tagged pages

Tab pages are useful for keeping different window layouts: code and tests in one tab, documentation and logs in another. For switching files alone, buffers from Chapter 2 are usually more direct.

Create a tab

• :tabnew or :tabedit abbreviation :tabe opens a new tab.
• Ctrl-w gf opens a new tab with the name of the file at the current cursor position

Note: Both :tabnew and :tabedit can be followed by a <space><filename> to open the specified file in a new tab. to open the specified file in a new tab, and : can be followed by a number indicating the position of the new tab in the list (starting from 0). _

Switch tabs

• gt or :tabnext Abbreviation :tabn Next tab (last one loops to first)
• gT or :tabprevious Abbreviation :tabp Previous tab (first one loops to last)
• :tabrewind abbreviation :tabr or :tabfirst abbreviation :tabfir to the first one
• :tablast abbreviation :tabl to the last tab

Close a tab.

• :tabclose Abbreviation :tabc to close the current tab
• :-tabc Close previous tab
• :+tabc Close the next tab
• :tabonly abbreviation :tabo close other tabs

Run :tabnew chapter01.md, then :vsplit chapter02.md. Use gt to switch tab pages and Ctrl-w w to switch windows inside the current tab. Finally, run :close and :tabclose to return to this chapter.

The next chapter will cover block operations.