Question

Is it possible in Vim to lock the top line of a window so that the first line in buffer is always seen on top of the window?

I have a file, say, dump of a database table. On the first line there are names of columns, other lines contain data. I want to be able to scroll contents up and down, and always see column names.

N.B. Lines can be lengthy, so I use nowrap and want column names and contents to scroll right and left simultaneously. That’s why :1split doesn’t suit — unless there’s a way to scroll two windows at the same time.

Thanks.

Answer 1

You can scroll two windows at the same time, so I think you can do what you want by splitting your window, and locking the scrolling behaviour. See :scrollbind and this tip for more details. Note that you have to lock each window in order that they move in sync.