Description

With this plugin, you can browse all buffers in a popup side window. In addition, this plugin provides a "hint key" for each buffer, just like what Vimperator/Vimium/VimFx does. Therefore, you can switch among buffers quickly with a single key stroke in the best case.

Install

Simply cp bufferhint.vim ~/.vim/plugin/.

Or if you use pathogen, just mkdir -p ~/.vim/bundle/bufferhint/plugin/,
and throw bufferhint.vim in that directory.

After that, add following two lines in your "~/.vimrc":

nnoremap - :call bufferhint#Popup()<CR>
nnoremap \ :call bufferhint#LoadPrevious()<CR>

Done.

Usage

Basic usage:

1. vim foo.txt bar.txt doe.txt
2. Type - to popup bufferhint window
3. Type j/k/C-f/C-b/PGUP/PGDN to navigate
4. Type ENTER to load the buffer under cursor

Load buffer by hint:

1. vim foo.txt bar.txt doe.txt
2. Type - to popup bufferhint window
3. Type b to load "bar.txt"
4. Type \ to load the previous buffer namely "foo.txt"

Switch sort mode:

1. Type - to popup bufferhint window
2. Type SPACE to switch sort mode

Delete buffers:

1. vim foo.txt bar.txt doe.txt
2. Type - to popup bufferhint window
3. Type dd to delete the buffer under cursor
4. Type db to delete a buffer by hint

Notes:

• Yellow hints means the buffers are sorted by path, green hints means the buffers are sorted by LRU.
• You can also type / in bufferhint window and search what you want, then type ENTER to load it.
• Apparently j/k/d/n/N are excluded from the hint chars.

Functions

• bufferhint#Popup() Toggle bufferhint window.

• bufferhint#LoadPrevious() Load the second item in LRU. It's very useful in the scene where you want to switch back and forth between two files.

• bufferhint#Save() Save current session to an external session file which can be restored by vim -S command in the future. The name of the session file is "session.vim" by default, it can be specified by setting g:bufferhint_SessionFile.

Preference

• g:bufferhint_SortMode Default sort mode. 0: sort by path, 1: sort by LRU.

• g:bufferhint_MaxWidth Maxmium window width.

• g:bufferhint_PageStep Page step, for PGUP/PGDN/C-f/C-b.

• g:bufferhint_SessionFile Session file name.

• g:bufferhint_KeepWindow Keep window after using d to delete buffer if it's been set to 1.

Screenshot

One More Thing

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