Keep Location List Closed

Keep Location List Closed

Waylon Walker's photo
Waylon Walker
·

3 min read

canonical_url: waylonwalker.com/keep-location-list-closed cover: /static/keep-location-list-closed-xmas2020.png cover_image: https:waylonwalker.com/keep-location-list-c.. tags: ["vim"] title: Keep Location List Closed published: true

status: draft

Vim's (neovim in my case) location list can provide some very useful information while developing. Mine gives me information about linting and type checking errors with fairly little config. Generally, it sits nicely at the bottom of the screen and barely affects me. Other times, especially while zoomed way in during a presentation, it just gets in the way.

location list eats the screen

Location List eating up the screen while I am zoomed in and trying to live code

Toggling the location list

Through some google search I found the culprit was syntastic. It has an auto_loc_list feature. We can turn it off by setting syntastic_auto_loc_list=0.

let syntastic_auto_loc_list=0

Keybindings

I want to keep the location list open automatically most of the time, but when I don't want it to keep opening it's generally detrimental. Trying to live code while the location list keeps taking up the whole screen is not cool.

First, create a function that will toggle both the location list and syntactic together.

let s:syntastic_auto_loc_list = 0
function! s:ToggleLocationList()
    if s:syntastic_auto_loc_list == 1
        let s:syntastic_auto_loc_list = 0
        let syntastic_auto_loc_list = 0
        :lclose
    else
        let s:syntastic_auto_loc_list = 1
        let syntastic_auto_loc_list = 1
        :lopen
    endif
endfunction

This binding will allow me to use gtl from normal mode to toggle the location list.

:command! ToggleLocationList :call s:ToggleLocationList()
nnoremap gtl :ToggleLocationList<CR>

I am starting a set of toggle keymaps under the gt keybinding, this one is the second one after a keybinding made to toggle paste mode.

vimLinux