A bit about Tiler

content/thoughts/one-week-with-tiler/index.md

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+title = "One Week with Tiler"
+date = 2019-01-19
+
+[taxonomies]
+tags = ["vim", "en-au", "plugins", "tiler", "tiling"]
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+
+Tiler is a tiling split manager for VIM. Here is my experience with it
+installed for one week.
+
+<!-- more -->
+
+Recently I had to work with Java (instead of Python) and one thing that happens
+when you're working with Java is that you have a bunch of files open at the
+same time. Also, I do prefer to keep things in splits 'cause there is always
+some information you need to keep visible for reference. But a lot of splits
+make visibly finding stuff very *very* hard.
+
+Then suddenly, it hit me: I could use a tiling window manager and it wouldn't
+be such a mess; on the other hand, using different windows for each VIM (with
+each file) would make copying'n'pasting a hell. So if I could actually find a
+tiling *plugin*, that would give me the best of both worlds.
+
+And that's where [Tiler]() gets in.
+
+Tiler is a tiling plugin for VIM. But it doesn't do anything by itself,
+meaning, it won't intercept every call to a split to do the tiling. But itadds
+new commands to manage the tiling.
+
+For example, to open a new split using the tiling, you need to use
+`:TilerOpen`. Again, Tiler won't capture every split, so you can still open
+splits with `:split` and `:vsplit`, which would break the tiling arrangements,
+so you can put everyhing back in order with `:TilerReorder`.
+
+Tiler has a layout (well, layouts, but they follow the same principle) of one
+large split for the main content and small ones for everything else. To bring
+one split to the main area, you can use `:TilerFocus`.
+
+And that's basically it.
+
+What I did was to add shortcuts to `:TilerReorder` and `:TilerFocus`. So I
+open splits like everyone else
+
+![](tiler-no-tiling.png)
+
+... and then using `<leader><space>` (the configurable leader key followed by
+space) to call `:TilerReorder` and I get a nice, tidy workspace:
+
+![](tiler-tiling.png)
+
+Although it may look cumbersome, my `leader` is defined to `space`, so to tidy
+up everything, all I have to do is press space twice in normal mode.
+
+Also, to help with the "focus on one thing" part, I also put a shortcut to the
+`:TilerFocus` command, with `<leader>f`.
+
+And here are my bindings:
+
+```vim
+nmap <Leader>f :TilerFocus<CR>
+nmap <Leader><space> :TilerReorder<CR>
+```
+
+One last thing: The size of the main area is configurable, which is good,
+since I found it a bit too large. To adjust it, you can use
+`g:tiler#master#size`, which is the size of main split. I found 55% to be a
+good size, so I put
+
+```vim
+let g:tiler#master#size = 55
+```
+
+And that's it. As usual, it takes some time to put the keybinds in "auto mode"
+(you know, day-to-day use), but I feel it helps a lot on actually put focus on
+some task without the cluttering of splits.