Why such a minimalistic approach? There are several Vim plugins for writing that not only change the functional behavior of the editor, but also visual aspects such as colorscheme and font. In contrast, this plugin focuses narrowly on the few tweaks needed to smooth the path to writing prose in Vim. Where you need more features, you can tailor your environment by installing those plugins that meet your specific needs.

Why use Vim for writing?

While programmers will extol the many virtues of Vim in writing code, few will appreciate its powerful text manipulation capabilities for writing documentation and prose. But with plenty of word processing tools available, including those which specifically cater to writers, why use a programmer’s editor like Vim for writing?

There are good reasons NOT to use Vim for writing:

Primitive in certain respects (no WYSIWYG or proportionally spaced characters, e.g.)
A modal editor with a steep learning curve
Time and effort to configure to your needs

But then again Vim offers a unique editing environment not matched by other writing tools:

Hands rest in a neutral ‘home’ position, only rarely straying to reach for mouse, track pad, or arrow keys
Minimal chording, with many mnemonic-friendly commands
Sophisticated capabilities for navigating and manipulating text
Highly configurable to suit your needs, with many great plugins available

Installation

Install using Pathogen, Vundle, Neobundle, or your favorite Vim package manager.

For those new to Vim: you should first work through one of the many Vim tutorials available. Then, once you are comfortable with the basics of Vim, consider installing this plugin.

Configuration

Hard line breaks or soft line wrapping?

Coders will have the most experience with the former, and writers the latter. But whatever your background, chances are that you are must contend with both conventions. This plugin doesn't force you to choose a side, where you can configure each buffer independently.

In most cases you can set a default to suit your preference and let auto-detection figure out what to do. Add to your .vimrc:

let g:pencil#wrapModeDefault = 'hard'   " or 'soft'
augroup pencil
  autocmd!
  autocmd FileType markdown call pencil#init()
  autocmd FileType textile call pencil#init()
  autocmd FileType text call pencil#init({'wrap': 'hard'})
augroup END

In the example above, for files of type markdown and textile, this plugin will auto-detect the wrapping approach, with hard as the default. But for files of type text, it will always use hard line endings.

Commands

Because auto-detect might not work as intended, you can invoke a command to set the behavior for the current buffer:

SoftPencil - configure for the soft wrapping of very long lines
HardPencil - configure for line endings with hard line breaks
TogglePencil - if off, enables with detection; if on, turns off
NoPencil - removes navigation mappings and restores buffer to global settings

Optionally, you can map to keys in your .vimrc:

nmap <silent> <leader>ps :SoftPencil<cr>
nmap <silent> <leader>ph :HardPencil<cr>
nmap <silent> <leader>pn :NoPencil<cr>
nmap <silent> <leader>pp :TogglePencil<cr>

Automatic formatting

This ‘autoformat’ feature affects HardPencil mode only.

When using HardPencil mode, Vim’s autoformat feature will be enabled by default and can offer many of the same benefits as soft wrapping lines. But autoformat can cause havoc when editing anything but paragraphs of words, such as a table or code block. In these cases you will need to disable it, at least temporarily, via a command:

AutoPencil - enables autoformat
ManualPencil - disables autoformat
ToggleAutoPencil - enables if disabled, etc.

Or optionally map to keys in your .vimrc:

nnoremap <silent> <leader>pa :AutoPencil<cr>
nnoremap <silent> <leader>pm :ManualPencil<cr>
nnoremap <silent> <leader>pt :ToggleAutoPencil<cr>

To set the default behavior, add to your .vimrc:

let g:pencil#autoformat = 1      " 0=manual, 1=auto

You can override this default during initialization, as in:

let g:pencil#wrapModeDefault = 'soft'
augroup pencil
  autocmd!
  autocmd FileType text call pencil#init({'wrap': 'hard', 'autoformat': 0})
  ...
augroup END

Manual formatting

Note that you need not rely on autoformat exclusively and can always reformat your paragraphs manually with standard Vim commands:

gqip - manual format
vipJ - manual unformat

Optionally, you can map these sequences to underutilized keys in your .vimrc:

nnoremap <silent> Q gqip
nnoremap <silent> K vipJ

Default textwidth

You can configure the default textwidth for HardPencil mode, when none is set globally, locally, or available via modeline:

let g:pencil#textwidth = 74

Sentence spacing

When formatting, by default only one space will be inserted after a period(.), exclamation point(!), or question mark(?). You can change this default.

let g:pencil#joinspaces = 0     " 0=one_space, 1=two_spaces

Cursor wrap

By default, h/l and the left/right cursor keys will move to the previous/next line after reaching first/last character in a line with a hard break. If you wish to retain the default Vim behavior, set the cursorwrap value to 0.

let g:pencil#cursorwrap = 1     " 0=disable, 1=enable

Auto-detection via modeline

Will the wrapping mode be detected automatically? Maybe. But you can improve its accuracy by giving it a hint.

At the bottom of this document is a strange code:

<!-- vim: set tw=74 :-->

This is a ‘modeline’ that tells Vim to run the following command upon loading this file into a buffer:

:set textwidth=74

That’s a strong hint to this plugin that we should assume hard line endings, regardless of whether or not soft wrapping is the default editing mode for files of type ‘markdown’.

If it’s 0, then pencil assumes you want soft line wrapping.

<!-- vim: set tw=0 :-->

To provide a hint for detection, you can add a modeline to the last line of your documents. For more details:

:help modeline

Note that even if the modelines feature is disabled (such as for security reasons) the textwidth may nevertheless be set by this plugin.

Future development

If you’ve spotted a problem or have an idea on improving this plugin, please post it to the github project issue page.

<!-- vim: set tw=74 :-->

README.markdown Unescape Escape

vim-pencil

Features