Suggestion for "vsplit or open existing"

[jordwalke]

It's really common for modern editors to encourage each file to be open in one "window" or viewport. Vim stands at odds against this so much of the time. Thankfully WinTabs helps bring Vim closer to a modern editor. There is one area where it could stand to improve. It seems there should be a command for the following features:

• "(vertical/horizontal) split file x into new split if the file is not already open in an existing window, or focus existing window and switch to existing buffer, if that file is already open in a window or tab (or native Vim tab even)"
• "Open file x into currently (or most recently focused) window if it is not already opened in an existing window, or switch to an existing window/buffer, if that file is already open in a window or tab (or native Vim tab even)"

[jordwalke]

In summary:

• "Open file x in new split or jump to existing file/window if it is already opened"
• "Open file x in new wintab or jump to existing file/window if it is already opened"

[zefei]

This sounds like a good feature to have next, thanks for the suggestion! I'll probably make it in two or three weeks. Although the command is quite easy to code, hooking it into all the cases that you can open a file (, <C-[>, gf, quickfix, CtrlP, Nerdtree, etc) is quite challenging.

[jordwalke]

I agree that integration is the most challenging part, however, I have vim config called VimBox Where I've done all of this setup for CtrlP and NerdTree (I don't know how to do it for gf, but I'm curious to learn).

I think the Vim Community needs to create a standard protocol for globally registering "which buffer belongs in which Vim Tab, window", so that all file switching/browsing/jumping plugins can consult that global table without having to reimplement the same searching logic (and in fact, some plugins like wintabs need to have their own custom logic anyways). Maybe wintabs is a good place to set an example here and establish a convention that all plugins can integrate with. Just a thought.

[zefei]

It's likely that I won't try to integrate with any of these use cases, but rely on hijacking buffer switching autocmds (the challenge here is a ton of edge cases). Setting up some protocol can work great (like VSCode's language server and debugger), but I think the vim culture will probably never agree to such a standard.

[jordwalke]

Wow, that would be impressive. I'm not sure how it could be done. How could a buffer switching autocommand detect that (in NERDTree or example) you hit <cr> for "open in new tab or wherever it's already open" vs. c-v for "open in new vertical split or wherever it's already open"?

[zefei]

@jordwalke I had some time this weekend and added experiment support for this. You can use the config let g:wintabs_switchbuf = 'useopen' or 'usetab' (see :h switchbuf for explaination) to get this behavior. It should work no matter you try to open file in current window or new split. However, like I said, this is a big hack (aren't all vim plugins so?) and there are tons of edge cases, so it's very experimental and please let me know if things break and how they break. Though some of the edge cases are nearly impossible to fix.

[jordwalke]

Can't wait to try!

[jordwalke]

Btw this feature seems to be working pretty nicely. You must have done some clever hacks! That might be worth open sourcing as a standalone plugin - something Vim desperately needs (and each plugin has to recreate it). Maybe your approach relies on Wintabs though so it can only be used with Wintabs (which is totally fine - all the more reason to use Wintabs!).

[zefei]

That's good to know! Unfortunately, my hack is very specific to wintabs, and not very reliable (rough assumptions and some race conditions ~).