Question

I downloaded the DrawIt plugin to draw a diagram in vim. I successfully installed that plugin.
Then I found DrawIt.vba file in my home directory and opened the file. It had the following content:

 " Vimball Archiver by Charles E. Campbell, Jr., Ph.D.
 UseVimball
 finish
 +-- 67 lines: plugin/DrawItPlugin.vim--------------------------------------------
 +--484 lines: plugin/cecutil.vim ------------------------------------------------
 +--1662 lines: autoload/DrawIt.vim-----------------------------------------------
 +--401 lines: doc/DrawIt.txt-----------------------------------------------------

In that file, I placed the cursor in the + (plus) and I pressed the right arrow key(->).
It opens the specified path (plugin/DrawItPlugin.vim) of the file.
I really wonder about that one.

I want to create something like this. I searched in NET, but I didn’t get any proper way to do it.

Can you help me do this?

Answer 1

Actually, that is not what is happening.

“Vimball” files are archive type files that contain number of other files in them. When you “source” such file, Vim extracts these files into specified paths, for example the content under plugin/DrawItPlugin.vim will get extracted into a file with that name inside your $VIM directory.

What you actually describe is an example of folding. Vim can “fold” parts of a file, so that they are hidden, and replaced by just one line.

+-- 67 lines: plugin/DrawItPlugin.vim--------------------------------------------

means that there is 67 lines of hidden content, starting with the text plugin/DrawItPlugin.vim. When you navigate the cursor into this text, it gets unfolded.

Type :he folding in Vim to read the Vim help on folding.

You can “jump” to a file whose path is under cursor with gf (goto file). Type :he gf for details.

Finally, using the “VimWiki” plugin, you can create files that link to other files, in a Wiki fashion.