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title = "One Week with Tiler"
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date = 2019-01-19
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[taxonomies]
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tags = ["vim", "en-au", "plugins", "tiler", "tiling"]
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+++
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Tiler is a tiling split manager for VIM. Here is my experience with it
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installed for one week.
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<!-- more -->
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Recently I had to work with Java (instead of Python) and one thing that happens
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when you're working with Java is that you have a bunch of files open at the
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same time. Also, I do prefer to keep things in splits 'cause there is always
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some information you need to keep visible for reference. But a lot of splits
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make visibly finding stuff very *very* hard.
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Then suddenly, it hit me: I could use a tiling window manager and it wouldn't
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be such a mess; on the other hand, using different windows for each VIM (with
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each file) would make copying'n'pasting a hell. So if I could actually find a
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tiling *plugin*, that would give me the best of both worlds.
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And that's where [Tiler](https://github.com/zhamlin/tiler.vim) gets in.
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Tiler is a tiling plugin for VIM. But it doesn't do anything by itself,
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meaning, it won't intercept every call to a split to do the tiling. But itadds
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new commands to manage the tiling.
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For example, to open a new split using the tiling, you need to use
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`:TilerOpen`. Again, Tiler won't capture every split, so you can still open
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splits with `:split` and `:vsplit`, which would break the tiling arrangements,
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so you can put everyhing back in order with `:TilerReorder`.
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Tiler has a layout (well, layouts, but they follow the same principle) of one
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large split for the main content and small ones for everything else. To bring
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one split to the main area, you can use `:TilerFocus`.
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And that's basically it.
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What I did was to add shortcuts to `:TilerReorder` and `:TilerFocus`. So I
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open splits like everyone else
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... and then using `<leader><space>` (the configurable leader key followed by
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space) to call `:TilerReorder` and I get a nice, tidy workspace:
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Although it may look cumbersome, my `leader` is defined to `space`, so to tidy
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up everything, all I have to do is press space twice in normal mode.
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Also, to help with the "focus on one thing" part, I also put a shortcut to the
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`:TilerFocus` command, with `<leader>f`.
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And here are my bindings:
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```vim
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nmap <Leader>f :TilerFocus<CR>
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nmap <Leader><space> :TilerReorder<CR>
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```
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One last thing: The size of the main area is configurable, which is good,
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since I found it a bit too large. To adjust it, you can use
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`g:tiler#master#size`, which is the size of main split. I found 55% to be a
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good size, so I put
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```vim
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let g:tiler#master#size = 55
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```
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And that's it. As usual, it takes some time to put the keybinds in "auto mode"
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(you know, day-to-day use), but I feel it helps a lot on actually put focus on
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some task without the cluttering of splits.
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