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vim-quit-another-window
Vim plugin that offers a way to close arbitrary window without bothering to leave current window.
Rationale
During my daily vimming, I often need to close some another window and keep working in the current window. And I want to do it without bothering to leave my current window.
For example, when I read some help in the upper window, and edit code in the lower window. At some moment, I decide to close help window. To do it, I have to press “Ctrl_W k :q”: Not very short. And this is not the worse case.
Another case:
+-----------------+-----------------+ | help | | | window | | | | current | +-----------------+ window | | | | | | <cursor> | | | | +-----------------+-----------------+
Focus is in the “current window”, cursor is on the <cursor> sign. I want to close “help window” and keep working in the current window.
Here's what I need to do: Ctrl_W h Ctrl_W k :q Ctrl_W l
That is a way too long! So, I wrote this plugin to make me feel better.
Plugin details
The plugin provides 5 commands. Firstly, four commands for most-frequently actions:
:Qhmeans “close left window and go back”:Qjmeans “close lower window and go back”:Qkmeans “close upper window and go back”:Qlmeans “close right window and go back”
And one universal command:
:Q <args>, where<args>are movement commands to needed window.
For example, :Q hk means “Go to the left window, then go to upper window, close it and go back to source window”
So, this long long command “Ctrl_W h Ctrl_W k :q Ctrl_W l” is truncated to short expression: “:Q hk”
There's one optional dependency: CmdAlias plugin. If it is installed, then lowercased aliases of commands will be available: :qh, :qj, :qk, :ql, :q <args>. I found it much more useful than capitalized ones.
Please note the following:
- If
:Qwithout arguments is passed, then current window becomes closed. (to provide compatibility of lowercased command:q) - If argument is passed, but target window is the same as current window, then no window will be closed.
Download
Currently, the plugin is hosted at vim.org only: quit-another-window.
Discussion
Could we have some mappings in the plugin for Normal mode?
Since there are no default mappings for closing current window either, I can't think of any mappings which it would make sense for the plugin to provide by default.
But you can always create your own mappings.
I am not sure whether I misunderstand something and miss the point, but there is a way to close the current window in Normal mode, namely
CTRL_W q. And, in fact, you can start it with a “count”, which can be the window number (starting in upper left with 1, going down and then right, although I have not fully tested how it behaves when you have quite irregular windows due to multiple splits in different directions).Hence, when I have four windows in the corner of the screen, I can close the bottom right with
4 CTRL_W q. Or, to use the example in the post,1 CTRL_W q.