In vim, how to scroll, continuously, by screen lines when wrapping is enabled?

For anyone reading this thread:

This thread on the Vi stackexchange offers a slightly hacky (but useable) solution to visual scrolling across wrapped lines.


I don't think it is possible to do exactly what you want.

Here's the description I get when I type :help CTRL-E

                                                             CTRL-E
CTRL-E                      Scroll windows [count] lines downwards in the buffer.
                            Mnemonic: Extra lines.

Note that while it says it is scrolling the window, it also mentions that it is scrolling lines in the buffer. You really are scrolling only one (wrapped) line at a time.

I don't think there's another way around this.

I can get the bottom of the window to display partial lines by setting display=lastline

I think display=lastline is a false solution - you still scroll the same amount, you just have more visible.

The real way to solve this is to disable wrapping:

:set nowrap

Edit

Some related threads that show that a "scrolling via screen lines" feature is under consideration, but will take a while to be implemented:

  • http://vim.1045645.n5.nabble.com/Feature-request-Display-partial-paragraph-at-the-top-of-the-window-td1166809.html (4 years ago)
  • http://vim.1045645.n5.nabble.com/Scrolling-screen-lines-I-knew-it-s-impossible-td3358342.html (the beginning of this year. Same dev mentioned wanting to implement it: "Ben Schmidt")

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