Question

I’m using Charles Campbell’s MPage[0] plugin to get multiple pages open, so I have vertical splits open for one buffer.

My question is: can I have another display without splits open for another buffer, and switch back to the display with splits, without opening another instance of vim?

It’s easy to do so using tmux or the like, but I want to do this within one instance of vim.

Also, I know that we can have two-column editing in Emacs, but can we introduce multiple (i.e. more than two columns) splits (vertical) for one open file which both:
(a) flow through the file continuously à la MPage,
(b) cycle through different files that have different splittings?

Are there any other editors that can do this?

REFERENCES:
[0] http://www.mail-archive.com/[e-mail]/msg04908.html

Answer 1

Vim 7 lets you have multiple tabbed pages, and each tab can be split into multiple windows. Vim shows the tabs along the top so you can select them with the mouse.

The commands I use most frequently are:

start vim with the -p option to open each file argument in a new tab.

:tabe <filename> edit a file in a new tab page. If the filename is left out then edit a new buffer.

:tabc closes the current tab page.

:tabo makes this the only tab page by closing all the others.

:tabs lists the tabs

tabdo <cmd> executes a command on every tab page.

gt cycle forward through the tab pages, gT cycles backwards.

See :h tab-page for more information.