Advice to shorten statusline

[protist]

environment

• vim: 8.0.0055
• vim-airline: 1:0.8.r151.g0ea4daa (latest)
• OS: Arch Linux
• Have you reproduced with a minimal vimrc: N/A
• What is your airline configuration: some parts reproduced below.
  if you are using terminal:
• terminal: terminator 0.98
• $TERM variable: xterm-256color
• color configuration (:set t_Co?): 256
  if you are using Neovim:
• does it happen in Vim: N/A

actual behavior

I'm find the statusline a little cramped when I tile terminal windows horizontally, and I have long filenames and/or long (tagbar) sections. Hence, I'm attempting to shorten the statusline.

I've so far reduced the size of the mode indicator with

let g:airline_mode_map = {
    \ '__' : '-',
    \ 'n'  : 'N',
    \ 'i'  : 'I',
    \ 'R'  : 'R',
    \ 'c'  : 'C',
    \ 'v'  : 'V',
    \ 'V'  : 'V',
    \ '' : 'V',
    \ 's'  : 'S',
    \ }

I've also reduced the z section by six characters by removing some of the special characters and spacing, and reducing some leading space.

let g:airline_section_z = '%3p%% %3l/%L:%3v'

desired behavior

However, there's potentially two other regions that I could probably abbreviate.

1. 90% of the time I'm editing a UTF-8 unix file, which makes utf-8[unix] show in the statusline. Is there a way to remove this if it's utf-8[unix], and show it if it's a different string?
2. I have the word count shown with let g:airline#extensions#wordcount#enabled = 1. This now shows (e.g.) 1,570 words in the statusbar. Is there a way to save 4 characters by abbreviating words to w?

edit

And I just realised that my g:airline_section_z modification doesn't work so well. Nothing is displayed in the file until I move the cursor. If I remove this line, then the z section displays immediately on opening a file.

[chrisbra]

2. you can use the variable let g:airline#extensions#wordcount#format = '%d words' to shorten the output

I just added a commit to document that variable

1. is more interesting

[chrisbra]

With #a69834 you can now set let g:airline#parts#ffenc#skip_expected_string='utf-8[unix]' to have it skipped.

[protist]

Thanks for that commit, that's fantastic! It works very well.

However, I couldn't change the word count format. I set the following in ~/.vimrc

let g:airline#extensions#wordcount#format = '%d w'

I then restarted vim, but it was still showing the default n words.

Also, you might have missed my edits to the original post. Essentially, I attempted to compact the z section with

let g:airline_section_z = '%3p%% %3l/%L:%3v'

However, after restarting vim, nothing is displayed on the right side of the statusbar until I move the cursor. If I remove this line in ~/.vimrc, then the z section displays immediately on opening a file.

[chrisbra]

I cannot reproduce this behaviour.

[protist]

Hmm… I thought that my differing behaviour might be from one of my 16 other vim plugins conflicting with vim-airline, so I uninstalled them all, then pared down ~/.vimrc to the following.

set laststatus=2
let g:airline#extensions#wordcount#format = '%d w'
let g:airline#extensions#wordcount#enabled = 1
let g:airline#extensions#wordcount#filetypes = ''

However, vim is still showing the default n words. I also ran :scriptnames to determine what files were being sourced.

  1: /etc/vimrc
  2: /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/archlinux.vim
  3: ~/.vimrc
  4: /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/plugin/airline-themes.vim
  5: /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/plugin/airline.vim
  6: /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/autoload/airline.vim
  7: /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/autoload/airline/init.vim
  8: /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/autoload/airline/parts.vim
  9: /usr/share/vim/vim80/plugin/getscriptPlugin.vim
 10: /usr/share/vim/vim80/plugin/gzip.vim
 11: /usr/share/vim/vim80/plugin/logiPat.vim
 12: /usr/share/vim/vim80/plugin/manpager.vim
 13: /usr/share/vim/vim80/plugin/matchparen.vim
 14: /usr/share/vim/vim80/plugin/netrwPlugin.vim
 15: /usr/share/vim/vim80/plugin/rrhelper.vim
 16: /usr/share/vim/vim80/plugin/spellfile.vim
 17: /usr/share/vim/vim80/plugin/tarPlugin.vim
 18: /usr/share/vim/vim80/plugin/tohtml.vim
 19: /usr/share/vim/vim80/plugin/vimballPlugin.vim
 20: /usr/share/vim/vim80/plugin/zipPlugin.vim
 21: /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/autoload/airline/extensions.vim
 22: /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/autoload/airline/extensions/quickfix.vim
 23: /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/autoload/airline/extensions/netrw.vim
 24: /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/autoload/airline/extensions/whitespace.vim
 25: /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/autoload/airline/extensions/po.vim
 26: /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/autoload/airline/extensions/wordcount.vim
 27: /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/autoload/airline/section.vim
 28: /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/autoload/airline/highlighter.vim
 29: /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/autoload/airline/themes/dark.vim
 30: /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/autoload/airline/themes.vim
 31: /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/autoload/airline/util.vim
 32: /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/autoload/airline/builder.vim
 33: /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/autoload/airline/extensions/default.vim
 34: /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/autoload/airline/extensions/wordcount/formatters/default.vim

I'm not sure how to troubleshoot further.

I also tested modifying the z section by adding the following to ~/.vimrc

let g:airline_section_z = '%3p%% %3l/%L:%3v'

This actually worked now. I reinstalled all my plugins and restored ~/.vimrc, and it broke again. I worked out that the presence of the following line prevents the z section from being displayed immediately.

let g:airline_skip_empty_sections = 1

(Oddly enough with my full ~/.vimc, a single keystroke will restore the z section, whereas with a pruned ~/.vimrc, it takes several seconds/keystrokes.)

[PezCoder]

For hiding the utf 8 encoding along with devicon that shows up there I did this

let g:airline_section_y = ''                                                                      │  6
let g:webdevicons_enable_airline_statusline_fileformat_symbols = 0

[protist]

@PezCoder That's not exactly what I was after. As per the original post, I wanted to hide encoding only if it's utf-8[unix], but #a69834 already fixes this.

[matclab]

@protist according to the code, to change the wordcount format, you shall use:

let g:airline#extensions#wordcount#formatter#default#fmt = '%d w'

[protist]

@matclab Thanks for the suggestion. I'm not sure how, but that hard-coded the word count to 1 w, even though there are thousands of words in my document.