vim-poptools

Exploit popups as much as you can!

* Vim-poptools *

This plugin aims to scale your productivity by conveniently using popups for a multitude of tasks, from finding files and directories, to setting your favorite colorscheme.

It is more essential compared to similar plugins such as fzf, fuzzyy or scope. Under some circumstances it may be slower, but I don't mind waiting a bit when the search process takes a while; it helps me pause and reflect on what I am doing, giving my brain some breathing room.

Nevertheless, I personally like the interface and how it displays all the results at once. Additionally, I find the opportunity of saving the last search very handy. The configuration is also fairly straightforward.

Commands

At the moment the following is what you can search and show in popups. I guess the commands are self-explanatory:

:PoptoolsFindFile
:PoptoolsFindFileInPath # Takes into account the setting of :h 'path'.
:PoptoolsFindDir
:PoptoolsBuffers
:PoptoolsRecentFiles
:PoptoolsCmdHistory
:PoptoolsColorscheme # The displayed colors depends on the value of :h 'background'
:PoptoolsGrepInBuffer # Find pattern in the current buffer
:PoptoolsGrep # External grep. Grep command is displayed.
:PoptoolsVimgrep # Vimgrep, show results in the quickfix-list instead of a popup.
:PoptoolsLastSearch # Show the last search results

... and if you are curious, the following is how I mapped them in my .vimrc:

nnoremap <c-p> <cmd>PoptoolsFindFile<cr><cr>
nnoremap <c-p>f <cmd>PoptoolsFindFile<cr>
nnoremap <c-p>l <cmd>PoptoolsLastSearch<cr>
nnoremap <c-tab> <cmd>PoptoolsBuffers<cr>
nnoremap <c-p>h <cmd>PoptoolsCmdHistory<cr>
xnoremap <c-p>h <esc>PoptoolsCmdHistory<cr>
nnoremap <c-p>d <cmd>PoptoolsFindDir<cr>
nnoremap <c-p>o <cmd>PoptoolsRecentFiles<cr>
nnoremap <c-p>g <cmd>PoptoolsGrep<cr>

File search

PoptoolsFindFile and PoptoolsFindInPath

These commands take into account the setting of :h 'wildignore', :h 'wildoptions' and :h 'path' options, so if you want to include/exclude some search path, you must adjust such options.

By default, hidden files are excluded. If you want to find them, then you must add . at the beginning of the search pattern, e.g. use .git* to get e.g. .gitignore.

Hidden files are searched in non-hidden folders. To find files in a hidden folder, you must first cd into such a folder. For example, cd ~/.vim followed by PopupFindFiles will search files inside the .vim folder.

PoptoolsGrep

This command uses an external "grep" program and therefore it is not affected by the Vim options settings. The default "grep" commands are the following:

  cmd_win_default = $'powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "for /R \"{search_dir}\" %f in ({files}) do @findstr /C:\"{what}\" /N \"%f\""' # Not working yet
  cmd_nix_default = $'grep -nrH --include="{files}" "{what}" {search_dir}'

where the values of {what},{files} and {search_dir} are replaced by user input.

Folder search

To find hidden folders with PopupFindDir command, just add a . in front of the search pattern, e.g. .git*. That will return e.g. .git/, .github/, etc.

Configuration

If you don't like the default behavior, there is room for some customization. You can do it through Vim the options :h 'wildignore', :h 'wildoptions' and :h 'path' and/or through the g:poptools_config dictionary that you can set as it follows.

To do that, be sure to create an empty dictionary in your .vimrc file, i.e. g:poptools_config = {}.

Preview window

You may not want the preview window in every case. For example, you want it when you grep but not when you open recent files. You can specify when you want the following keys:

 'preview_file',
 'preview_file_in_path',
 'preview_recent_files',
 'preview_buffer',
 'preview_grep'.

You can for example specify g:poptools_config['preview_grep'] = true, g:poptools_config['preview_recent_files'] = false, to have a preview window in your grep result list, but not in the recent files list.

Syntax highlight in the preview can be handy, but it may slow down the user experience. You can avoid using syntax highlight in the preview window by setting g:poptools_config['preview_syntax'] = false. This is useful in case you are encountering troubles when using the preview window. The match are still highlighted.

All the boolean values in the g:poptools_config are set to true as default.

It follows an example of configuration:

g:poptools_config = {}`
g:poptools_config['preview_syntax'] = false
g:poptools_config['preview_recent_files'] = false