The Vi series of editors became more powerful to use once I finally understood the concepts behind buffers and views.

Buffers and views

In Vi you can open a file (:edit file1.txt) and then open another one (:edit file2.txt). After the second command the editor will be showing you file2.txt. Unlike GUI editors, however, file1.txt isn’t really forgotten. It’s still in memory in a buffer. It’s just that the view isn’t showing it.

You can type :b TAB to list all the available buffers and get the current view to show a buffer you choose.

A buffer is kind of like a tab in a GUI editor, but is actually much more powerful.

Split view

A split breaks the window vertically (:vsplit) or horizontally (:split) into multiple views each of which can show a buffer. These buffers can be same or different.

Now you see how powerful this is. I can load up a file (which is in a buffer now) and then split the view into two halves and I can view different parts of the same buffer (file) in the two views. These are live views: I can edit two different parts of the same file in the two views.

If I load multiple files, I can use the :b command to switch which buffer is show in a given view.

Tabs

Tabs are yet another layer on top of this. Tabs allow us to have multiple windows in the application. Each window can have different splits and different views onto any buffer, including the same buffer viewed multiple times across tabs.

Once I understood buffers and splits I stopped using tabs.

Example

I’m revising my novel. I have an outline, the old version of the manuscript and the new version of the manuscript.

I primarily edit MS v2 while refering to the outline, and periodically copy over chapters and sections from MS v1.

My prefered layout is to do a vertical split, have the outline/old MS open in the left split (as two buffers) and the new MS open on the right.

----------------------------------
|               |                |
|  Outline/     |                |
|  MS v1        |    MS v2       |
|               |                |
----------------------------------

You can even script NeoVim to open up this arrangement at startup:

nvim -c ":e outline.md | :e ms_v2.md | :vs ms_v1.md"